vines that overran it.

Mrs. Lander beckoned and called to the man, who had stopped pitching hay
and now stood leaning on the handle of his fork. At the signs and sounds
she made, he came actively forward to the road, bringing his fork with
him. When he arrived within easy conversational distance, he planted the
tines in the ground and braced himself at an opposite incline from the
long smooth handle, and waited for Mrs. Lander to begin.

"Will you please tell us who those folks ah', livin' back there in the
edge of the woods, in that new unfinished house?"

The man released his fork with one hand to stoop for a head of timothy
that had escaped the scythe, and he put the stem of it between his teeth,
where it moved up and down, and whipped fantastically about as he talked,
before he answered, "You mean the Claxons?"

"I don't know what thei' name is." Mrs. Lander repeated exactly what she
had said.

The farmer said, "Long, red-headed man, kind of sickly-lookin'?"

"We didn't see the man--"

"Little woman, skinny-lookin; pootty tonguey?"

"We didn't see her, eitha; but I guess we hea'd her at the back of the
house."

"Lot o' children, about as big as pa'tridges, runnin' round in the