ve it, and
I--well, I--"

"When they bring ye things, you take 'em. Ye'll help 'em a heap more
that-a-way 'n ye will curin' 'em. The' hain't nothin' so good fer a man
as payin' his debts. Hit keeps his hade up whar a man 'at's good fer
anything ought to keep hit. I hearn a heap o' talk here in these
mountains 'bouts bein' stuck up, but I tell 'em if a body feels he
hain't good fer nothin', he pretty generally hain't. He'd a heap better
feel stuck up to my thinkin'."

"They've done pretty well, all who could. They've brought me everything
from corn whiskey to fodder for my horse. A woman brought me a bag of
dried blueberries the other day. I don't know what to do with them. I
have to take them, for I can't be graceless enough to send them away
with their gifts."

"You bring 'em here, an' Cass'll make ye a blueberry cake to eat hot
with butter melt'n' on hit 'at'll make ye think the world's a good place
to live in."

"I'll do it," he said, laughing, and took his solitary path up the
steep. Halfway to his cabin, he heard quick, scrambling steps behind
him, and, turning, saw little Hoyle bringing Cassandra's small
melon-shaped basket, covered with a white cloth.

"I said I could run faster'n you could. Cass, she sont some th' chick'n
fry." He thrust the basket at Thryng and turned to run home.

"Here, here!" David called after the twisted, hunched little figure.
"You tell your sister 'thank you very much,' for me. Will you?"

"Yas, suh," and the queer little gnome disappeared among the laurel
below.

In the morning, David found the place of the Widow Timms, and her son
agreed to come down the next day and accept wages for work. A weary,
spiritless young man he was, and the home as poverty-stricken as was
that of Decatur Irwin, and with almost as many children. It was with a
feeling of depression that David rode on after his call, leaving the
grandmother seated in the doorway, snuff stick between her yellow teeth,
the grandchildren clustering about her knees, or squatting in the dirt,
like young savages. Their father lounged in the wretched cabin, hardly
to be seen in the windowless, smoke-blackened space nearly filled with
beds heaped with ragged bedclothes, and broken splint-bottomed chairs
hung about with torn and soiled garments.

The dirt and disorder irritated David, and he felt angered at the
clay-faced son for not being out preparing his little patch of ground.
Fortunately, he had been able to conceal his