When once the company was about complete, the next step was to divide the heap. To do this, judges were selected, to wit: Mr. Butterfield, a slow-speaking man, who was believed to know a great deal because he said little, and looked at things carefully; and Jake Sniger, who also had a reputation for knowing a great deal, because he talked glibly, and was good at off-hand guessing. Butterfield looked at the corn, first on one side, and then on the end of the heap. Then he shook his head in uncertainty, and walked round to the other end of the pile, squinted one eye, took sight along the top of the ridge, measured its base, walked from one end to the other with long strides as if pacing the distance, and again took bearings with one eye shut, while the young lads stared at him with awe. Jake Sniger strode away from the corn and took a panoramic view of it, as one who scorned to examine anything minutely. He pointed to the left, and remarked to his admirers that he "'low'd they was a heap sight more corn in the left hand eend of the pile, but it was the long, yaller gourd-seed, and powerful easy to shuck, while t'other eend wuz the leetle, flint, hominy corn, and had a right smart sprinklin' of nubbins." He "'low'd whoever got aholt of them air nubbins would git sucked in. It was neck-and-neck twixt this ere and that air, and fer his own part, he thought the thing mout be nigh about even, and had orter be divided in the middle of the pile." Strange to say, Butterfield, after all his sighting, and pacing, and measuring, arrived at the same difficult and complex conclusion, which remarkable coincidence served to confirm the popular confidence in the infallibility of the two judges. So the ridge of corn was measured, and divided exactly in the middle. A fence rail, leaning against either side, marked the boundary between the territories of the two parties. The next thing to be done was to select the captains. Lumsden, as a prudent man, desiring an election to the legislature, declined to appoint them, laughing his chuckling kind of laugh, and saying, "Choose for yourselves, boys, choose for yourselves." Bill McConkey was on the ground, and there was no better husker. He wanted to be captain on one side, but somebody in the crowd objected that there was no one present who could "hold a taller dip to Bill's shuckin." "Whar's Mort Goodwin?" demanded Bill; "he's the one they say kin lick me. I'd like to lay him out wunst." "He ain't yer." "That air's him a comin' through the cornstalks, I 'low," said Jake Sniger, as a tall, well-built young man came striding hurriedly through the stripped corn stalks, put two hands on the eight-rail fence, and cleared it at a bound. "That's him! that's his jump," said "little Kike," a nephew of Captain Lumsden. "Couldn't many fellers do that eight-rail fence so clean."