He could feel her still trembling in excitement as she sat down on the edge of the bed. "I reckon you couldn’t sleep, nuther," she said. "Thar hain’t a shut eye in this cabin. They’ve all laid down, an’ laid down, an’ got up over an’ over." She laughed softly and twisted her hands nervously in her lap. "We are all that excited we don’t know which end of us is up. Why, Luke, boy, it will be the talk of the whole county, and it’ll be a big feather in old Ann Boyd’s cap—you goin’ off an’ makin’ money so fast after she give you your schoolin’, an’ they all predicted it ud come to no good end. Sech luck hain’t fell to any family as pore as we are sence I kin remember. I don’t know as I ever heard o’ such a thing in my life. La me, it ud make you split your sides laughin’ to set out thar an’ listen to all the plans them children are a-makin’. But Mark, he has the least to say of all, an’, Luke, as happy as I am, I’m sorter sorry fer that pore old fellow. He feels bad about the way he’s always treated you, an’ run down yore kind o’ work. He’s too back’ard an’ shamefaced to ax yore pardon, an’ in a sheepish sort of a way, jest now, he hinted he’d like fer me to plaster it over fer ’im. He’s a good man, Luke, but he’s gittin’ old an’ childish, an’ has been hounded to death by debt an’ circumstances." "He’s all right," King said, strangely moved. "Tell him I have not the slightest ill-will against him, an’ I hope he’ll get along well on the new place." "Somehow you keep talkin’ like you don’t intend to stay long," she said, tentatively. "I know, but I sha’n’t be far away," he replied. "I can run up from my work in Atlanta every now and then, and it would be great to rest up on a farm among home folks, here in the mountains." "Well, I’ll be glad of that," Mrs. Bruce said, plaintively. "I have got sorter used to my step-children, but they ain’t the same as a body’s own flesh and blood. I’m proud of you, Luke," she added, tremulously. "After all my fears that you’d not come to much, you’ve turned out to be my main-stay. You’ll be a great man before you die. Anybody that kin make an’ throw away ten thousand dollars as easy as you have, ain’t no small potato as men go these days. I reckon the trouble with us all is that none of us had brains enough to comprehend what yore aims was. But Ann Boyd did. She’s the most wonderful woman that ever lived in this part of the country, anyhow—kicked an’ shoved about, hated an’ hatin’, an’ yet ever’ now an’ then hittin’ the nail square on the head an’ doin’ somethin’ big an’ grand—something Christ-like an’ holy—like what she done when she with-drawed her suit agin Gus Willard, simply because it would throw Mark out of a job to go on with it." "Yes, she’s a good woman, mother."