only holler for help when their petticoats are down around their
ankles on the far bank. We'll wait and send Everett a photagraf of me
and you dishing out molasses and lard as grocer clerks. And glad to do
it, too!" he added with a sudden fervor of thankfulness rising in his
voice and great gray eyes.

"Yes, Uncle Tucker, glad and proud to do it," answered Rose Mary
quickly. "Oh, don't you know that if you hadn't seen and understood
because you loved me so, I would have felt it was right to do--to do
what was so horrible to me? I will--I will make up to you and them for
keeping me from--it. What do you suppose Mr. Newsome will do when he
finds out that you have moved and are ready to turn the place over to
him, even without any foreclosure?"

"Well, speculating on what men are a-going to do in this life is about
like trying to read turkey tracks in the mud by the spring-house, and
I'm not wasting any time on Gid Newsome's splay-footed impressions.
Come to-morrow night I'm a-going to pull the front door to for the
last time on all of us and early next morning Tom Crabtree's a-going
to take the letter and deed down to Gid in his office in the city for
me. Don't nobody have to foreclose on me; I hand back my debt dollar
for dollar outen my own pocket without no duns. To give up the land
immediate are just simple justice to him, and I'm a-leaving the Lord
to deal with him for trying to _buy_ a woman in her time of trouble.
We haven't told it on him and we are never a-going to. I wisht I could
make the neighbors all see the jestice in his taking over the land and
not feel so spited at him. I'm afraid it will lose him every vote
along Providence Road. 'Tain't right!"

"I know it isn't," answered Rose Mary. "But when Mrs. Rucker speaks