Shif'less Sol shook his head and sighed.
"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.
"Why, the Greeks, of course."
"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."
Shif'less Sol whistled.