"Paul," said Shif'less Sol, "you've read books. Tell us about some o' them old fellers that lived a long time ago. I like to hear about the big ones."
"Well," said Paul, "there was Alexander. Did you ever hear of him, Sol?"
"I can't truly call myself an eddicated man," he replied, "though I have the instincks o' one. But I ain't had the proper chance. No, Paul, me an' Alexander is strangers."
"Then I'll make you acquainted," said Paul. He settled himself more comfortably before the fire, and the others did likewise.
"Alexander lived a long, long time ago," said Paul. "He was a Greek--that is, he was a Macedonian with Greek blood in him--I suppose it comes to the same thing--and he led the Greeks and Macedonians over into Asia, and whipped the Persians every time, though the Persians were always twenty to one."
"Who writ the accounts o' them thar battles?" asked Shif'less Sol.
"I thought so. Why, Jim Hart here must be a Greek, then. To hear him tell it, he's always whippin' twenty men at a time. But it ain't in natur' for one man to whip twenty."
"I never said once in my life that I whipped twenty men at a time," protested Jim Hart.
"We'll let it pass," said Paul, "and Sol may be right about the Greeks piling it up for themselves; but so they wrote it, and so we have to take it. Well, Alexander, although he wasn't much more than a boy, kept on whipping the Persians until at last their king, Darius, ran away with his wives."
"Do you mean to tell me, Paul," he said, "that any white man ever had more than one wife! I thought only Injun chiefs had 'em?"
"Why, it was common a long time ago," replied Paul.
"What a waste!" said Shif'less Sol. "One man havin' a lot uv wives, an' Jim Hart here ain't ever been able to get a single one."
"An' you ain't, either, Sol Hyde," said Jim Hart.
"Oh, me!" replied Shif'less Sol carelessly. "I'm too young to marry."
"Let him go on about Alexander, the fightin' feller," interrupted Tom Ross.
"Alexander conquered all Asia," resumed Paul, "but it didn't agree with him. The more he conquered the more he wanted to conquer."
"Jest like a little boy eatin' turkey," said Shif'less Sol. "Can't hold enough to suit him. Stummick ain't ez big ez his appetite, an' he hez to cry about it. I don't think your Alexander wuz such a big man, after all."