“‘Well, ef it’s so,’ I told her, ‘it ain’t so bad as buryin’ Nathe.’ I reckon that’s another time I spoke wrong, fer she said she didn’t know about that, an’ went off a-studyin’. But she come in an’ got supper, tryin’ to smile peart, an’ Nathe didn’t know nuthin’ wuz wrong. Next mornin’ she got to studyin’ agin, an’ come round to me about ten o’clock. ‘Ranzie,’ she says, ‘I’m goin’ to kill Nathe,’ an’ I says: ‘You need him too bad, Ponnie, to hep raise yer childern.’ ‘I kain’t raise ’em at all,’ she says, ’ef he keeps me bothered this a-way. Nathe’s my man, an’ I ain’t goin’ to have him runnin’ here an’ yander.’ I went to Nathe then, an’ told him that Ponnie knowed about him an’ he’d better get it fixed up with her. He said nobody could lie hard enough to git anything fixed up with Ponnie, an’ I said: ‘What ef she took a notion to kill ye, Nathe?’ He laffed big at that, an’ said: ‘Ranz, you don’t know Ponnie like I do. She’d keep me here jest fer her temper to bite on.’ ‘She ain’t so awful high-tempered,’ I says. ‘She works hard, an’s raisin’ yer four childern. She’d never say a hot word, leastways to you, ef it wuzn’t fer the way folks say you run around. Ef it’s so, I’d try to quit it till she gits to where she don’t think enough o’ you fer it to bother her.’ “‘Lord, they ain’t no hope o’ that,’ he said. ‘But don’t you worry ’bout her killin’ me.’ An’ he went off to hep some men we had workin’ in the fodder. I kep’ busy in the orchard, an’ ’long a little ’fore twelve I wuz goin’ inter the yard with a tow-sack full o’ winesaps on my back when I seen Ponnie comin’ from the smoke-house with the big butcher-knife in her hand, an’ seen Nathe a-crossin’ over to the spring. They come up close together, an’ she put out her hand an’ took holt o’ Nathe’s hair right above his forehead. He had powerful curly hair then, like I told ye, an’ black as sut. She turned his head right back, an’ says: ‘Nathe, I’m goin’ to cut yer throat.’ That sack dropped off my back, but I wuz so cold I couldn’t move. Nathe looked right at her an’ laffed. ‘Go ahead, Ponnie,’ he says. ‘I reckon that’s what you ought to do.’ She let go then an’ made like she wuz playin’ with him, but she says, ‘Some o’ these days I’ll mean it,’ an’ went inter the kitchen. In about haf an hour she come to the door an’ called ever’body to dinner. We’s all in the yard, washed up by that time, an’ we went in. Ponnie had made apple pies that mornin’, an’ had chicken an’ dumplin’s, ’cause that wuz what Nathe liked, an’ she’d set the table out nice, an’ put on a white table-cloth, which we didn’t have only fer company an’ Sundays. She hepped ever’body, an’ picked out the drumstick fer little Rosie, an’ made the boys, Herb an’ Sam, stop scrappin’. Then she says: ‘Hep yersevs, I’m goin’ inter the big room fer a minute.’ We went on eatin’, an’ Nathe called out she’d better hurry up, the dumplin’s wuz goin’ fast, an’ right then we heard a shot. When we got