her owner, the darling thing? I know I'll just love her when I get to know
her--them better, as I will in only about eighteen hours now."

"Ann, you are mad--mad!" foamed Matthew, as he set down his plate of
perfectly good and untasted food, and buried his head in his hands until
his mop of black hair looked like a big blot of midnight.

"I'm not mad, Matthew, just dead poor, an heiress out of a job and with the
necessity of earning her bread by the sweat of her brow instead of
consuming cake by the labor of other people. Uncle Cradd is coming in again
with a two-horse wagon, and the carriage to move us out to Elmnest
to-morrow morning. Judge Rutherford will attend to selling all the property
and settle with father's creditors. Another wagon is coming for father's
library, and in two days he won't know that Uncle Cradd and I have moved
him, if I can just get him started on a bat with Epictetus or old Horace.
Then me for the tall timbers and my friend the hen.

"Oh, Ann, for the love of high heaven, marry me to-morrow, and let me move
you and Father Craddock over into that infernal, empty old barn I keep open
as a hotel for nigger servants. Marry me instead--"

"Instead of the hen?" I interrupted him with a laugh. "I can't, Matt, you
dear thing. I honestly can't. I've got to go back to the land from which my
race sprang and make it blossom into a beautiful existence for those two
dear old boys. When Uncle Cradd heard of the smash from that horrible
phosphate deal he was at the door the next morning at sun-up, driving the
two gray mules to one wagon himself, with old Rufus driving the gray horses
hitched to that queer tumble-down, old family coach, though he hadn't
spoken to father since he married mother twenty-eight years ago.