apple and the man?"

"You'll go to hell when you die, and then I guess you'll believe," said
Thomas Jefferson, still more definitively.

She took a red apple from the pocket of her ragged frock and gave it to
him.

"What's that for?" he asked suspiciously.

"You eat it; it's the kind you like--off 'm the tree right back of Jim
Stone's barn lot," she answered.

"You stole it, Nan Bryerson!"

"Well, what if I did? You didn't."

He bit into it, and she held him in talk till it was eaten to the core.

"Have you heard tell anything more about the new railroad?" she asked.

Thomas Jefferson shook his head. "I heard Squire Bates and Major Dabney
naming it one day last week."

"Well, it's shore comin'--right thoo' Paradise. I heard tell how it was
goin' to cut the old Maje's grass patch plumb in two, and run right
smack thoo' you-uns' peach orchard."

"Huh!" said Thomas Jefferson. "What do you reckon my father'd be doing
all that time? He'd show 'em!"