. St. Nicholas [serial]. sold the skin for ten cents to Selms, who tossed it back on thepile. Then Huck came back and, after waitinga reasonable time, crawled in the open window,got the coonskin and sold it to Selms again. Theboys did this several times that afternoon, andthe capital of the band grew. But at last JohnPierce, Selmss clerk, said: Look here, Mr. Selms, there s somethingwrong about this. That boy has been selling uscoonskins all the afternoon. Selms went back to his pile of pelts. Therewere several sheepskins, but only one coonskin —the one he had that moment bought. Selms himself
. St. Nicholas [serial]. sold the skin for ten cents to Selms, who tossed it back on thepile. Then Huck came back and, after waitinga reasonable time, crawled in the open window,got the coonskin and sold it to Selms again. Theboys did this several times that afternoon, andthe capital of the band grew. But at last JohnPierce, Selmss clerk, said: Look here, Mr. Selms, there s somethingwrong about this. That boy has been selling uscoonskins all the afternoon. Selms went back to his pile of pelts. Therewere several sheepskins, but only one coonskin —the one he had that moment bought. Selms himself, in after years, used to tell thisstory as a great joke. One of the boys occasional pastimes was toclimb Hollidays Hill and roll down big stones,to frighten the people who were driving by. Hol-lidays Hill above the road was steep; a stoneonce started would go plunging downward andbound across the road with the deadly momentumof a bomb. The boys would get a stone poised,then wait until they saw a team approaching, MK. SliLMS IL UCHAbliS A COONSKIN. calculating the distance, would give the boulder astart. Dropping behind the bushes, they wouldwatch the sudden effect upon the party below asthe great missile shot across the road a few yardsbefore them. This was huge sport, but they car-ried it too far. For, at last, they planned a grandclimax that would surpass anything before at-tempted in the stone-rolling line. 148 THE BOYS LIFE OF MARK TWAIN [Dec, A monstrous boulder was lying up there in theright position to go down hill, once started. Itwould be a glorious thing to see that great stonego smashing down a hundred yards or so infront of some peaceful-minded countryman jog-ging along the road. Quarrymen had been get-ting out rock not far away and had left theirpicks and shovels handy. The boys borrowed thetools and went to work to undermine the bigstone. They worked at it several hours. If theirparents had asked them to work like that, theywould have thought they were be
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