"Then Sam can sell it for enough to go out and take his place in the
world," I said, with the greatest relief in my voice.

"He could, but he won't," answered daddy, looking at me with keen
sympathy. "I tried that out on him. Just because that brier-patch has
never had a deed against it since the grant from Virginia to old Samuel
Foster Crittenden of 1793 he thinks it is his sacred duty to go out and
dig a hole in a hollow log for Byrd and himself and get in it to
sentimentalize and starve."

"Oh, I think that is a beautiful thought about the land, and I wish I
had known it earlier! But could they be really hungry--hungry, daddy?" I
said, with a sudden vacant feeling just under my own ribs in the region
between my heart and my stomach.

"Oh no," answered daddy, comfortably. "They both looked fat enough the
last time I saw Sam coming to town in a wagon with Byrd, leading a
remarkably fine Jersey calf. We'll go out in that new flying-machine you
brought home with you and pull them out of their burrow some day when
you get the time. Fine boy, that; and, mother, when is that
two-hundred-pound black beauty in your kitchen going to have supper?"

I didn't tell daddy I had gone to the ends of the earth to hunt for Sam
in less than thirty-six hours after I had landed in Hayesboro, but I
went up to my room to slip into something clean and springy, walking
behind a thin mist of tears of pure sentiment. That was the third time
in about seven hours I had been crying over Sam Crittenden, and then I
had to eat a supper of fried chicken and waffles that would have been
delicious if it hadn't been flavored by restrained sobs in my throat. I
was so mad at my disloyal thoughts about a beautiful character, which