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on seeing the stranger with Professor Overall. His black coat and a certain unsmiling quality about his long sallow face stamped him for a preacher. Abner's spirits sank and sank at these elaborate preparations to force him to go to school and thereby weaken his mind. He began to doubt even if Railroad Jones could rescue him from such a situation.

Professor Overall took the floor and stood rolling his prominent eyes about the room for several seconds, after the approved fashion of Lane County orators, then began with the utmost solemnity:

"Honourable Judge and justices of the court, Brother Blackman an' me has come before you to-day to address you on what I an' all the scholarly world considers to be the most important base on which our civilization rests, an' that is the edjercation of the young. Ain't that right, Brother Blackman?"

"Amen, Brother Overall," rumbled the minister in a basso profundo.

"Brother Blackman, as a great many of you all know, is an evangelist now holdin' a meetin' at Shady Grove Church on Big Cyprus, an' from all reports, God shore has been blessin' him in a wonnerful manner with a great outpourin' of the spirit." He turned for corroboration to the minister.

"That's right, Brother Overall," assented the divine in his sepulchral tone, "we shore have got the devil on the run on Big Cyprus."

"But in his work of savin' souls," continued the pedagogue, "Brother Blackman goes jest a grain furder than savin' the ol' sheep from destruction; he's after the innocent lam's, the little childern of this county an' them that's to come in the fewcher."

A pause here as the room became intensely quiet except for a whisper somewhere, "edjercated fool, but he shore han'les a speech. . . ."

"Brother Blackman ast me as a man of science an' as a representative of the edjercational intrusts of this county to git up an' tel you-all what I thought of his plan. I want