“You’d ’a’ had to know her gran’mother, I reckon. Anyways I’m jest tellin’ what I hearn. There wuz a woman up on Sawmill Creek that folks said wuzn’t much good. She had hair as yaller as honey, an’ as sprangly as a stump full o’ gran’daddies. It begun to seep around that Nathe wuz slippin’ over there, an’ Ponnie got holt o’ the talk. After that, Nathe dassent stay away from home all night, she’d git so ruffled up. He come to me one day an’ ast me ef I couldn’t ride over inter Tennessee an’ look at some mules he wanted to buy to trade on. I thought he ought to go hissef, ’cause he knowed a mule from the tip o’ his nose to the kick in his heels, so I says: ‘Nathe, you kain’t afford to let Ponnie ruin yer business. Air ye a man, er air ye not?’ That’s what I said, an’ I reckon I ought to ’a’ kept my mouth shut, seein’ how it turned out, an’ gone on inter Tennessee. Nathe walked off an’ saddled up, an’ told Ponnie he’d be gone four er five days. She’d come out to the gate, an’ when he told her that, I saw her kindle up, an’ she turned square around an’ went inter the kitchen. After Nathe rid off I went in too, an’ I saw Ponnie wuz workin’ hard an’ tryin’ to git easy. We talked about what a good man Nathe wuz, an’ what he wuz doin’ fer his fam’ly, an’ how the neighbors thought sech a sight o’ him, an’ what he wuz goin’ to make agittin’ mules out o’ Tennessee an’ tradin’ on ’em, an’ she quieted off an’ seemed all right till Nathe got back from his trip. When he come in she wuz mighty glad to see him. He told her he’d done well, an’ she’d be stringin’ di’monds in that black hair some day, an’ they ’most had a little courtin’ spell. But Julie Mack come in the next day to help Ponnie put up fruit an’ bile off apple butter, an’ Julie’s mother lived up on Sawmill Creek not fur from that woman.” “Ol’ Sis Mack could split a truth an’ make two lies out of it!” said Aunt Lizy, and Uncle Ranz loftily accepted the interpolation. “That’s what I told Ponnie when she come out to the orchard where I wuz shakin’ down apples. She said that Julie’s mother had seen Nathe ridin’ down Sawmill Creek road, an’ I told her what I thought of ol’ Sis Mack’s tongue. ‘He may ’a’ jest rid by innercent,’ I says. ‘Innercent!’ says Ponnie. ‘It wuzn’t yisterday she seen him, it wuz the day before.’”