"I don't know yet," said Jack, "but I've got a splendid idea. The govenor has just bought his winter's supply of wood, as he generally does in June, and he always has it cut while its green because it costs only a dollar and a quarter a cord, while the men charge a dollar and a half when its seasoned. I'll ask him to let me work it out in that way."
"Why, Jack," remonstrated Matt, "it will take you more than half a year of holidays."
"No, it won't," said Jack, "I can chop nearly a cord a day when I work hard. Besides, I've got an idea worth more than my own industry. I'm going to blow at school, and around among the boys, about what a splendid wood-chopper I am."
"I'll say the same thing about you," said Matt.
"All right; we'll both talk of my particular swing with the axe until the whole crowd will be mad enough to take the conceit out of me at any price. Then I'll offer a bet of something worth having—a half dollar against half a dime, say—that I can chop and split more in a single day than any other boy in town. Lots of them will take up the bet, we'll appoint a day, the place to be our wood, pile, and every boy to bring his own axe. You shall be umpire, so you won't have to do anything but walk about and egg the others up to business."
This brilliant device took complete possession of Matt, and as for Jack, within a week there was not a boy in town who could pass him without making a face at him, and scarcely a mother dependant upon her own boys for fuel but had an abundant supply without having to beg for it. Many indignant boys offered indefinite bets in favor of their own skill with the axe, but the sagacious Jack declined them all on the ground that he could not honorably bet on what he called a sure thing. When finally he offered his own wager, it was accepted by acclamation by nearly the whole of his own arithmetic class, numbering twenty-nine. The boys from the other school hoped they were not to be excluded just because they lived in a different part of the town, and Matt went on a special mission to them to assure them that this was to be, figuratively speaking, an international contest, in which all territorial lines were to be as if they existed not. Some other boys who never went to school, hardened young rowdies, who, as a rule did nothing, and accumulated a large stock of vitality which was not always expended in proper ways, heard of the approaching match, swore by all sorts of persons, places and things that they only wished they might "take a whack at that game," and were cordially invited to participate. Then the would-be contestants met in convention, and Jack formally deposited his half dollar in the hands of Matt, who was to be stake-holder. There being some difficulty in deciding how the bets against Jack were to be held, the challenger magnanimously declined to accept any bet, if the crowd would agree, each for himself, that the man who cut least, and he alone, should be loser of a half dime in case of Jack's triumph.
After a fair canvass of conflicting interests as to date, which involved the withdrawal of several boys who had agreed to go fishing or shooting, or berrying, or visiting, it was decided that the ensuing Saturday morning would be the most available time, particularly as Jack explained that his father who, he was sure, would stop the whole thing if he heard of it in advance, would start before daylight that morning to attend a consultation miles away by rail. The idea that the proceeding would be displeasing to any adult silenced at once the objections of all who had preferred another date, and it even brought back the boys who had pleaded prior engagements.
As for Dr. Wittingham, he was completely astounded and wonderfully pleased when Jack, with a frank business-like air, proposed to cut the ten cords of winter wood as an offset to the bridge bill of eleven dollars and sixty-two cents. The doctor patted Jack's head, called him a noble fellow, gave him a stick of licorice, and promised him a dollar for himself on the completion of the work.
"Now," said the doctor, when Jack had left his presence, "I think I've a good hard point for that work on heredity; Impose a rational penalty for offense, and its manifest justice will improve both the reasoning and moral nature of the offender."