become wildly absorbed in a brilliant scarlet cardinal that followed the
car, scolding and swearing in the most pronounced bird language, all for
no fault of ours that we could see, when we turned in the cedar-pole
gate of The Briers and began to wind our way up through the potato and
corn field on one side and the primeval forest on the other. It was
difficult to get Peter past the old thorn-tree view of the Harpeth
Valley we had come through, and he wanted to get out and stay for ever
at the milk-house; but I finally landed him in a Homeric daze up in
front of the house, which stood with its hospitable old door wide open
but deserted.

"Sam! Byrd! Mammy!" I shouted at the top of my lungs, while Peter sat
paralyzed at the sight of Sam's farm-house. Peter had got the old
Crittenden house and all the others where he had been entertained in
his mind's eye, and that Sam's present residence was a shock to him I
could see plainly. That was the beginning.

"Hi, Betty, come here quick--I need you!" came in Sam's most
business-like voice from the barn up on the hill, while I could hear
wild and excited cheeps from the Byrd and disturbed clucks from Mammy.

Leaving Peter to disembark as he recovered himself, I sped around the
house and up to the barn.

"Here, Betty, this blamed mule has kicked old Jude, and I must have
somebody to hold the edges together while I sew it up. Mammy's hands
aren't steady enough. Now press the edges together and never mind the
blood on your hands. Hold the halter, Mammy. You get that can of lime
ready to dust it, Byrd." Thus in dirty, blood-stained overalls, with his
hair on ends and an earth smudge as usual right across his face like a