And when Eric drew a big white square on the kettle with his chalk, a voice rose hoarsely from the back of the room:
“Well, I’ll be jiggered!”
At that all the Irishmen laughed, and then sat still again, out of respect, being “jiggered.”
Eric divided the white square into many smaller squares. In one corner he drew a number of crosses; in the opposite corner he did the same. One of these groups of crosses he labeled T.
“That is the Thingvalla settlement,” he said, “and this—is New Antrim.”
Then he swept his hand between the two and glanced at Billy Ketchum. “And all this in here is the pine owned by Miller, Knees & Dye.”
The shoemaker whispered in his ear, and he turned to the chairman, and said in a sterner voice: “I want to show who is to blame for all this trouble between the settlements.”
“We are not dealing with quarrels,” was the response. “We are here to equalize taxes.”
“That’s it, that’s what I want to do. I want to show that the taxes aren’t equal.”