the gate for further parley, and thus discover the exhausted
culprit.

"And a man tooken pisen on account of a bank's failing in
Louisville," she added in a still shriller tone, which just did
carry across the distance to Mrs. Pike's front door, through which
Miss Wingate was disappearing. Her prompt flight had saved the day
for the disconsolate lover, who cautiously rolled from under the
bush again and went on with his interrupted nap.

She found Mrs. Pike and Miss Prissy at home, and spent a really
delightful hour in speculating and unfolding possible plans for the
Pratt-Hoover nuptials. Miss Prissy blushed and giggled at an
elephantine attempt at badinage that her sister-in-law directed at
her on the subject of Mr. Petway, and after a while Miss Wingate
went on her way, in a manner comforted by their wholesome merriment.
She hesitated at the front gate of the Tutt residence, but the sight
of the Squire pottering around in a diminutive garden at the side of
the house decided her to enter, for Squire Tutt held the charm for
her that a still-fused fire-cracker holds for a small boy.

"I ain't well at all," he exploded, in answer to her polite
question, asked in the meekest of voices. "Don't you set up to marry
Tom Mayberry, girl, if you don't wanter get a numbskull. Told me to
eat a passel of raw green stuff for my liver, like I was a head of
cattle. I'll die if I follow him. Everybody he doctors'll die. Snake
bite is the only thing he knows how to cure, and snakes don't crawl
until the last of the month. Don't marry him, I say, don't marry
him!"