Overholt, when these reports came to him. "As ef I didn't know what I
wanted--as ef I couldn't raise my own chile;" and as he said this he ever
avoided Aunt Cornelia's honest eye.

It was when Sammy was eighteen, the best dressed, the best horsed--and the
idlest--to be found from Little Turkey Track to the Fur Cove, from Tatum's
to Big Buck Gap--that he went one day, riding his sorrel filly, down to
Hepzibah, ostensibly to do some errands for Aunt Cornelia, but in fact
simply in search of a good time. The next day Blev Straly, a rifle over his
shoulder and a couple of hounds at heel, stopped a moment at the
chopping-block where Pap was splitting some kindling.

"I was a-passin'," he explained--"I was jest a-passin', an' I 'lowed I'd
drap in an' tell ye 'bout Sammy. Hit better be me than somebody 'at likes
to carry mean tales and wants to watch folks suffer." Aunt Cornelia was
beside her husband now.

"No, no," Blev answered the look on the two faces; "nothin' ain't the
matter of Sammy. He's jest married--that little Huldy Frew 'at's been
waitin' on table at Aunt Randy Card's _ho_-tel. You know, Aunt Cornely, she
is a mighty pretty little trick--and there ain't nothin' bad about the gal.
I jest knowed you and Pap 'ud feel mighty hurt over Sammy doin' you-all
like you was cruel to him--like he had to run away to git married; and I
'lowed I better come and tell you fust."

The "little Huldy gal" was, as Blev Straly had described her, a mighty
pretty little trick, and nothing bad about her. The orphan child of poor
mountaineers, bound out since the death of her parents when she was ten
years old, she had been two years now working for Aunt Randy Card, who kept
the primitive hotel at Hepzibah. Even in this remote region Huldy showed