ither
side of which were shelves bearing pyramids of bottles. On the bar at
one end were piled oranges and at the other lemons and limes whose
sophistication seemed out of place somehow in the Settlement in the
Harpeth Valley. All the trappings that I judge would go with the
dispensing of liquor were present, but our eyes could discover no small
child and we stood together and waited anxiously.

"He's got me toe, me toe, and won't let go. He's chewing it off!" at
last came a lusty yell from just outside a back door that led out into a
side yard from behind the bar, and with one accord the proprietor of
the Last Chance and I ran to the scene of the devouring. And as we ran I
heard a door slam in the rooms back of the bar and we met Martha face to
face on the scene of action. I shall never forget the picture that
confronted me there in that little back yard upon which the bar of the
Last Chance opened, and I somehow never want to.

On a little grass plot a small boy danced and yelled and firmly to one
of the capering feet was hung a large mud turtle which was flapped this
way and that by the strenuous young leg, but which held on with
apparently every intention of letting only the traditional thunder
loosen its grasp on the pink prize.

"Stand still, you Stray, and let me get at the varmint," commanded Jacob
impatiently.

"Let mother get the beast, sonny," Martha pleaded as she knelt on the
grass and caught the dancing boy by his arm and brought his dervish
gyrations to a halt.

I stood unconscious of intrusion and absorbed with interest and watched
the operations begun on the tenacious turtle and the writhing toe.
Neither of the three principals in the action noticed me at all as
Martha held the boy and Jacob bent and took hold of the turtle in his
hard brown spotted shell. And as the operations for his liberation were
begun the small boy became both still and quiet and I was able to get a
good view of him as he leaned against his mother's shoulder and held out
the foot to Jacob.

As I looked at him something queer stirred in me with a sharp pain and
then was quiet. He was the most delicious bit of five-year-old humanity
I had ever beheld and I doubt if any childless woman could have seen
such a child cuddle to another woman's breast and shoulder and not have
had something of the same thrill of pain. His whiteness and pinkness and
sturdy chubbiness were like many another infant's charms but his jet
black top-knot