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long look he and his mother were taking at each other when some strange women came in and interrupted them." The heads exclaimed with me in wonder and loving interest. "Give it to me," I said, "so that I may send it off at once to be enlarged for his Christmas present." _Friday._ Very heavy rains for three days, and another big "tide," with seven panels of the back fence washed away, and Perilous a boiling yellow flood down which logs and whole trees are rushing. What was my horror, on hearing loud cheers from the stable-lot this morning, to see Nucky out in the middle of the torrent, standing calmly on a swift log, which even as I glanced, shot around a curve and out of sight. Ten minutes of agony for me followed; then Nucky reappeared, wet only to the waist, and followed by every boy on the place. "Gee, that wasn't nothing," he deprecated, in answer to my reproaches, "I've rid logs ever sence I was born. I just jumped on her when she come a-nigh shore, and off again down Perilous a piece. I haint afeared!" "Haint afeared got his neck broke yesterday," remarked Joab, drily. These desperate and daring moods of Nucky's are source of untold suffering to me. I know they are caused largely by his worry over Blant, and his baffled desire to be at his post on Trigger. Sometimes I think it would be best to let him go,--there can be no doubt that Blant does need him, and he is doing little in his studies, and is so bitter and gloomy that I scarcely know my once delightful boy. XVI FILIAL PIETY AND CROUP _Saturday Bed-time._ This evening, while we were popping corn in the "fotch-on" poppers, Killis said he could recollect "capping" corn in a skillet under the still while he and his father made liquor. "You made liquor?" I exclaimed. "Can't remember when I didn't," he replied; "I holp paw from the time I could walk. I would go with him up the hollow, and gather wood for the fire, and then set and watch the singlings whilst he kep' a lookout for officers. And sometimes he would let me mix the doublings, too. And when the liquor was made, and folks would come to buy it, I would circle round up in the field where it was hid, to show 'em the place, and they would come up with their jugs and leave the money under a stump. Gee, I knowed so much about the business I could run it myself!" "I hope and pray you never will," I said, earnestly. "What you got again' it,--you haint no offic
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