“It certainly was a mighty convenient thing, having that gun along,” he said. “Old brother sarpent, he never would have waited for me to get after him with a stick. A bullet was the only thing that could put him out of business, and I wa’n’t sure I could hit him at that distance—couldn’t have, I reckon, if the case hadn’t been so pressing.” Carin got up and ran toward him with her hands outstretched. “Thank you! Thank you, sir!” she said, in that pretty eager way of hers. “I know what you’ve done for me, and I must take you to see my papa and mamma. Why, it was wonderful! I’ll never forget it as long as I live.” “Steady on, steady on,” said the man. “Knocking the head off a tarnation rascal like that is no new business with me. Glad, though, to have served you, little miss.” He bowed low, and the girls watched him, fascinated. “I didn’t hear you playing this morning, sir,” went on Carin. “Weren’t you in at the Singing? I should think they’d love to have you play.” “My innings are coming, Miss Honey Bird,” replied the man smiling. “There ain’t been a singing at Friendly Church for thirty years that hain’t had old Haystack Thompson there, a fiddling. But I was late getting here to-day. I’ve been farming it away up on Rabbit Nose Mountain, and I had to hoof it down here. I started early enough, but I got lazy like and laid down and dozed off. When I woke, the sun was high overhead and I just piked along, but even then I found myself late.” “You will play, though, won’t you, sir?” “You bet I will, Miss Honey Bird. And I pray the Lord will keep a guard over my bow and hold it down to hymn tunes. If so be, that thar bow should get Old Nick in it, as I’ve known it to do afore now, I might have the whole kit and boodle footing the Highland fling or the Virginia reel right there on the floor of the meeting house.” Carin laughed merrily. “Oh, do come along quick and meet papa,” she said. “You’ll be such good friends.” She ran ahead in her eagerness, urging “Haystack Thompson” to follow. It had not been necessary for her to ask why he had this curious name, for she knew very well that it had been given to him because of his wild crop of hair, which did indeed look like a stack of hay after a bad windstorm. “I’d no idea that Azalea and I had come so far,” she said to her new friend. “We wandered on and on, talking, and when we came to that lovely hollow we couldn’t keep out of it.”