scions and grafts, but could do nothing with them.

"Fact is," said old Silas Withers, "those folks that expects to raise good
fruit by begging graffs, and then layin' abed and readin' newspapers, will
have a good time waitin'. Elbow-grease is the secret of the Blood
Seedlin', ain't it, Al?"

"Well, I reckon, Squire Withers, a man never gits anything wuth havin'
without a tussle for it; and as to secrets, I don't believe in them,
nohow."

A square-browed, resolute, silent, middle-aged man, who loved his home
better than any amusement, regular at church, at the polls, something
richer every Christmas than he had been on the New Year's preceding--a man
whom everybody liked and few loved much--such had Allen Golyer grown to
be.

* * * * *

If I have lingered too long over this colorless and commonplace picture of
rural Western life, it is because I have felt an instinctive reluctance to
recount the startling and most improbable incident which fell one night
upon this quiet neighborhood, like a thunderbolt out of blue sky. The
story I must tell will be flatly denied and easily refuted. It is absurd
and fantastic, but, unless human evidence is to go for nothing when it
testifies of things unusual, the story is true.

At the head of the rocky hollow through which Chaney Creek ran to the
river, lived the family who gave the brook its name. They were among the
early pioneers of the county. In the squatty yellow stone house the