Ralph Hartsook has taken a teaching job in Flat Creek. It’s a rough assignment—the last few teachers quit after getting beat up, or “licked,” by the stronger pupils. Ralph meets Bud Jones, one of the biggest and toughest pupils, who warns him how tough it’ll be to keep the school in order, and Ralph quickly decides he’ll have to win Bud over to his side. As events develop, Ralph notices Hannah, a young servant who is “bound” to the Jones family. Just as he starts to take a romantic interest, there’s a midnight burglary. Circumstances—and some conniving by corrupt officials—cause suspicion to fall on Ralph, and he soon finds that he must enlist the aid of his friends to help uncover the real culprits.

In this novel Eggleston makes heavy use of local dialect, because while there was already plenty of literature focused on the culture of the Eastern United States, he wanted to portray life in what were then called the “Western” states, today’s Midwest. In a later edition he added footnotes, some long and descriptive, on the development of these rural speech patterns. Eggleston went on to write several more novels in this style.