tykin, what do you think
of that for good land?" And as he looked back at the great square of
black earth he had upturned, Sam's eyes flecked with the blue sky and
snapped with enthusiasm.

[Illustration: THE BYRD WAS ATTIRED IN MINIATURES OF SAM'S OVERALLS]

"It looks good enough to eat," I answered, with a queer dirt enthusiasm
rising in me that I had never even heard of one's having before.

"Yes, and you will eat it in about four months' time in the form of
roasting ears," answered Sam, smacking his lips, which had a streak of
the mud delicacy across them at right angles. "But go on up and tell
Mammy to put your name in her dinner-pot and buy the Byrd to get you
anything you need or want to the half of our kingdom. I'll be there in
ten shakes of the mule's tail."

The road that leads from the cedar-pole gate through Sam's wilderness up
to the farm-house curves in and out and around the hill past as many
lovely spots as my enthusiasm could endure. Halfway up, there is a
glimpse past a gray old tree with crimson thorns, of the valley with Old
Harpeth looming opposite. Further on a rocky old road leads down around
a clump of age-distorted cedar-trees to the moss-greened stone
spring-house, from which the water gurgles and pours past Sam's huge
earthern crocks of milk. Over it all broods the low white house on the
plateau, from under whose wings I found one small blue chicken running
and cheeping wildly for a ride up the hill.

The Byrd was, as usual, attired in miniatures of Sam's overalls, and his
red mop stood on ends all over his head, while his freckles shone forth
resplendently from the excitement of my arrival.

"Say, Betty, what you think? Old Buttercup found a calf out in the woods
and it has got a white nose and two spots. Sam wanted to name it Chubb
for the doctor that saved its life 'fore it got borned, but I said
ladies first, and I calls it Betty. You can let it lick your fingers if
Sam milks on 'em first. And Dominick have hatched 'fore the white
hen--eleven, and one what Sam calls a half chicken, because he don't see
how it is black when the eggs was bought thoroughbreds; but Mammy says
because they is Yankee eggs. Come see all everything."

Sam's barn is an old tumble-down collection of sheds and the most lovely
place I ever got into. It is running over with new-born life, and you
can get an armful of first one variety and then another. I liked the
collie puppies best, but the Byrd was crazy abou