"Is it all--very--very bad, Mrs.--I mean, Aunt Mary?" I asked, as I laid
down my dull-toothed instrument for the dissection of the plank, and sank
cross-legged on the barn floor in front of her.

"Oh, it might be worse," she answered as she smiled again with resolution.
"Rufus has eleven nice hogs and feed enough for them until summer, thanks
to the help of Adam in tending the ten-acre river-bottom field, which they
made produce more than any one else in the river bend got off of fifty.
Nobody can take the house, because it is hitched on to you with entailment,
and though the croppers have skimmed off all the cream of the land, the
clay bottom of it is obliged to be yours. Now that you and William have
come with a little money the fields can all be restored. Adam will help you
like he did Hiram Wade down the road there. It only cost him about ten
dollars to the acre.

"But--but father and I--that is, Aunt Mary, you know father has lost all
his property and Uncle Cradd assured us that--that there was plenty for us
all at Elmnest," I said in a faltering tone of voice as a feeling of
descending tragedy struck into my heart.

"Cradd and Rufus have lived on hog, head, heels, and tail for over a year,
with nothing else but the corn meal that Rufus trades meat with Silas for.
I thought, honeybunch, when I saw you coming so stylish and beautiful with
those none-such chickens that you must have been bringing a silk purse
sewed with gold thread with you. I said to Silas as he put out the lamp
last night, 'The good Lord may let His deliverance horses lag along the
track, but He always drives them in on the home stretch for His own, of
which Moseby Craddock is one.' 'Why, she's so fine she can't eat eggs outen
chickens that costs less than maybe a hundred dollars the dozen,' answered