in.
But then Mose had been able to earn his seventy-five cents a day at
wood-sawing; and besides, by keeping his fishing-lines baited and set
out the back and front doors--there were no windows--he had often drawn
in a catfish, or his shrimp-bag had yielded breakfast for two.

Duke's responsibilities had come with the winter and its greater needs,
when the receding waters had withdrawn even the small chance of landing
a dinner with hook and line. True, it had been done on several
occasions, when Duke had come home to find fricasseed chickens for
dinner; but somehow the neighbors' chickens had grown wary, and refused
to be enticed by the corn that lay under Mose's cabin.

The few occasions when one of their number, swallowing an
innocent-looking grain, had been suddenly lifted up into space,
disappearing through the floor above, seemed to have impressed the
survivors.

Mose was a church-member, and would have scorned to rob a hen-roost, but
he declared "when strange chickens come a-foolin' roun' bitin' on my
fish-lines, I des twisses dey necks ter put 'em out'n dey misery."

It had been a long time since he had met with any success at this
poultry-fishing, and yet he always kept a few lines out.

He _professed_ to be fishing for crawfish--as if crawfish ever bit on a
hook or ate corn! Still, it eased his conscience, for he did try to set
his grandson a Christian example consistent with his precepts.

It was Christmas Eve, and the boy felt a sort of moral responsibility in
the matter of providing a suitable Christmas dinner for the morrow. His
question as to what the old man would like to have had elicited the
enthusiastic bit of reminiscence with which this story opens. Here was a
poser! His grandfather had described just the identical kind of dinner
which he felt powerless to procure. If he had said oysters, or chicken,
or even turkey, Duke thought he could have managed it; but a pan of
rich fragments was simply out of the question.

"Wouldn't you des as lief have a pone o' hot egg-bread, gran'dad,
an'--an'--an' maybe a nice baked chicken--ur--ur a--"

"Ur a nothin', boy! Don't talk to me! I'd a heap'd ruther have a
secon'-han' white Christmas dinner 'n de bes' fus'-han' nigger one you
ever seed, an' I ain't no spring-chicken, nuther. I done had 'spe'unce
o' Christmas dinners. An' what you talkin' 'bout, anyhow? Whar you gwine
git roas' chicken, nigger?"

"I don' know, less'n I'd meck a heap o' money to-day;