"Without a fortune, indeed! Why that Tennessee Land--"

"Never mind the Tennessee Land, Colonel. I am done with that, forever
and forever--"

"Why no! You can't mean to say--"

"My father, away back yonder, years ago, bought it for a blessing for his
children, and--"

"Indeed he did! Si Hawkins said to me--"

"It proved a curse to him as long as he lived, and never a curse like it
was inflicted upon any man's heirs--"

"I'm bound to say there's more or less truth--"

"It began to curse me when I was a baby, and it has cursed every hour of
my life to this day--"

"Lord, lord, but it's so! Time and again my wife--"

"I depended on it all through my boyhood and never tried to do an honest
stroke of work for my living--"

"Right again--but then you--"

"I have chased it years and years as children chase butterflies. We
might all have been prosperous, now; we might all have been happy, all
these heart-breaking years, if we had accepted our poverty at first and