But this did not explain things any better.
"Cunjer?" repeated Hamilton. "You mean magic?"
"You're fooling, aren't you?" said Hamilton questioningly, "you can't mean it. I never heard of 'cunjer' as a real thing. There's lots about it in books, of course, but those are fairy tales and things of that sort."
"Reckon they don' know as much in cities as they think they do," the youngster retorted.
"Just what do you mean by 'cunjer'?" asked Hamilton, knowing that it would be useless to argue the conditions of a modern city with a boy who had never seen one.
"Bein' able to put a cunjer on, so's the one yo' cunjer has got to do anythin' yo' want."
"Sort of hypnotism business," commented the older boy.
"Dunno' what yo' call it in the city. Up hyeh in the mount'ns we call it cunjer, an' thar's some slick ones hyeh, too."
"But how did the teacher get mixed up in it?" queried Hamilton. "It doesn't sound like the sort of thing you'd expect to find a schoolmaster doing."
"He wasn't doin' it, it was again' him," the mountain boy explained. "The folks hyeh suspicioned as he was tippin' o' the revenoo men."
"Easy on that word, Hamilton," suddenly broke in the old Kentuckian, who had overheard part of the conversation, "thar's plenty up hyeh that don' like it."
"All right, Uncle Eli, I'll remember," the boy answered; then, turning to his companion, he continued "You were saying that some of the people in the mountains thought the schoolmaster was giving information to the revenue men."
"Some said he was. I don' believe it myself, an' most of us boys didn' believe it, but then the teacheh was allers mighty good to us."
"Often," he said, "an' when they come to the stills they seemed to know ev'rythin' an' ev'rybody. An' then some one tol' that it could be proved on the teacheh. It never was, but thar was a plenty o' people who believed the story. I didn't, but then the teacheh was allers good to me."
"But what did the revenue men have to do with the 'cunjering'?" asked Hamilton, desiring to keep his informant to the point.
"They didn't, it was the men on the Ridge."
"I know all about it," the lad answered, with a slightly less listless air, "for I was in school that mornin'. For a week or more we boys had seen ol' Blacky Baldwin sort o' snoopin' aroun' near the school, but as we allers crossed our fingers an' said nothin' so long as he was in hearin', we weren't afraid."