"That 'ere one Keats swapped him all the apples for at first,--the one you said weren't worth more'n one apple. Keats told him you said so, and he said he would prove it were by giving Keats two-down for it, if he wanted; and Keats was glad to make the trade." "Do you mean to tell me," I asked, "that Geordie made seventeen cents, a gingercake, a taw _and_ the purse, out of that trade, and Keats lost everything but two wormy apples?" Philip scratched his head thoughtfully. "By grab, he skinned the little Salyer, didn't he? Gee, I wisht I was a born trader like him, dag gone his ole soul!" When Geordie returned to-night with Absalom, his jaw was tied up in a red bandana, he wore a look of patient suffering, and explained that he had had such a sorry time with toothache he could not return yesterday, indignantly repudiating Philip's suggestion that he had just wanted to stay and see a big time with the Yontses and drink their moonshine. Later, when, while filling a hot-water bag for him, I regretfully spoke to him on the subject of cheating in trades, he was deeply hurt, said he had traded the apples back to Keats only to favor him, and confided in me that he aimed to be a preacher when he growed up. _Sunday Night._ During the ear-washing this morning, I had another round with Philip, whose ears are always the grimiest, hair the most unkempt, clothes the most tattered. "Philip," I said, with a groan, "you could be the handsomest boy on the place if you only would!" He replied contemptuously, "Handsome never earnt his salt; when a man steps in the door, looks flies up the chimley!" In the midst of our altercation, Absalom sauntered into my room, took his stand before my mirror, and proceeded to give his hair a good dressing with my brush and comb. Later, as I saw Geordie walking to church with a Bible under his arm, heard his heart-felt singing of the hymns, and watched his pious, soap-shining face, I wondered I could ever have thought he meant to cheat anybody. The Trojan War made fine progress to-night,--it is only on Saturday and Sunday nights that we can have stories, as other evenings must be spent in study. From the first, Killis has identified himself with his famous namesake, while Nucky has as inevitably taken sides with the Trojans and Hector, so much so that the boys call him "Trojan." This evening he was scathing in his denunciation of Achilles. "Gee," he said, "I wisht them Greeks had a-had a _man_ along. Now if Blant had a-been there, you'd a seed some fighting! He wouldn't have sulled around in no tent none! He'd a-got the drap on Hector allus-ago, same as he done on Elhannon and Todd and Dalt Cheever when they laywayed him in April. He was riding along past the cliff where they was hid in the bushes, and heared the click of the lock when Elhannon cocked his trigger, and whirled around and poured six bullets into 'em before they could fire their guns, killing Elhannon and very nigh killing t'other two."