"Well, I'll tell you now that he didn't," was the answer, "nor for a
pocketful of red stick-candy which he took from a jar. He said it was
for his wife's sweet tooth; but if she got any of it she met him on the
road home, for he was chucking it in at a great rate as he walked away."

They both glanced toward Henley's house. They saw the subject of their
remarks emerge from the kitchen door, and hang his slouch hat on a nail
on the veranda, and reach for the dinner-horn.

"He's going to blow for me," Henley smiled, as the spluttering blast
from the horn rang out and reverberated from the mountain-side.
"Breakfast is ready. He eats like a horse at all times, and is as hardy
as a mountain-goat. I'm going to call him 'Kind Words.'"

"Kind Words"? Dixie looked up inquiringly and smiled. "That's as odd as
Carrie's 'stepfather-in-law.' Why are you going to call him that?"

"Because," and Henley glanced back as he was moving away, "the
Sunday-school hymn says, 'Kind words can never die,' and I know old
Wrinkle won't."

CHAPTER II

As Henley, the axe in hand, approached the house, his stepfather-in-law,
with considerable clatter, was hanging the horn on its nail.

"I noticed you was talkin' to Dixie Hart at the fence," he said, as he
discarded his quid of tobacco and stroked his grizzled chin, on which a
week-old beard grew. "Well, if I wasn't no older'n you are, an' was as
good-lookin', which maybe I ain't, I'd chin 'er over the fence mornin',
noon, and night--married or unmarried. Man laws was made to keep us
straight, I reckon; but when the Lord Himself lived on earth they wasn't
quite as bindin' as folks try to make 'em now. A feller, in that day an'
time, could be introduced to a new wife every mornin' at breakfast, if
he could afford to keep a drove of 'em, and still be looked up to as a
wise man and a prophet."

"Dixie was talking about buying a new axe," Henley answered, "but I told
her this one was good enough, and that I'd make Pomp grind it."

"She's as purty as red shoes," old Jason said. "And if she hain't had a
load to bear, no female ever toted one. Talk about justice! Why, Alf,
that gal hain't had a thimbleful sence she was a baby. She has set out
to make a livin' fer a mammy that can't hardly see where she's walkin',
and an aunt that is mighty nigh tied in a knot with rheumatism, and she
is doin' it--bless yore life!--better'n many a man could in the same
plight. Folks say she's already paid o