there's a feelin' in my throat and in my breast--hyer,"--he laid his hand
pathetically over his heart,--"a cur'us, gone, flutterin' feelin'. And when
Sammy r'ars up and threatens he'll take Huldy and the chaps--you know,"--he
finished with a gesture of the hand and a glance of unspeakable
pain,--"when he does that 'ar way, or something comes at me sudden like
that--that we may lose 'em, hit seems like--right hyer,"--and his hand went
again to his heart,--"that I can't bear it--that hit 'll take my life."

This was the last time Cornelia ever remonstrated with Pap John. She had a
little talk with the new doctor from Hepzibah who bad succeeded old Dr.
Pastergood; and after that John was added to the list of her anxieties. He
might carry the milk to the cabin on The Bench; he might slip in, when he
deemed Sammy away--or asleep--and plough the corn; she saw the tragic folly
of it, but must be silent. And so on that particular June morning, when Pap
had put up the mule, clambered down the short-cut footway from The Bench to
the old house, stopping several times to shake his head again and murmur to
himself--"Whut you gwine do? There's them chaps; there's Huldy. Mustn't
plough his co'n; mustn't take over air cow. Whut you gwine do?"--Aunt
Cornelia's seeing eye noted his perturbation the moment he came in at the
door. With tender guile she built up a considerable argument in the matter
of a quarterly meeting which was approaching--the grove quarterly, in which
Pap John was unfailingly interested, and during which there were always
from two to half a dozen preachers, old and young, staying with them. So
she led him away--ever so little away--from his ever-present grief.

It was the next day that he said to her, "Cornely, I p'intedly ain't gwine
to suffer this hyer filchin' o' co'n them Fusons is a-keepin' up on me."

"Is the Fusons a-stealin' yo' co'n, John?" she responded, in surprise.
"W'y, they got a-plenty, ain't they?"