in, there she wuz lyin’ on the floor stone dead, an’ Nathe’s ol’ rifle there to tell it. Nathe fell down on the floor an’ kept sayin’, ‘You don’t mean it, Ponnie, you know you don’t mean it,’ over an’ over till I’s about crazy. He’d rub her black hair like he wuz techin’ a baby, an’ swear that he’d put his eyes out ’fore he’d look at another woman agin. ‘You know you hear me, Ponnie,’ he’d say, ‘you know you do.’” Uncle Ranz paused feelingly, and when another voice took up the narrative, the help was tolerantly welcomed. “Yes,” said Uncle Dan’l, “I’ve hearn Ben Goforth tell it. He wuz one o’ the men workin’ there that day, an’ they pulled Nathe away from Ponnie an’ inter the yard, till the women could lay her out. Soon as she wuz dressed fer her coffin he went back an’ laid on the floor till they carried her off.” “He got over it, though,” said Serena, who could never linger in gloom. “Purty slow, purty slow, but when he did put it by--well, sir, he _put it by_.” “Slow it wuz,” said Aunt Lizy. “I remember, as well as Ranz, er anybody here, ’bout that next winter an’ spring. Nathe kept lookin’ like he didn’t keer whether he wuz in this world er the next, an’ he wouldn’t put in no crap. Ranzie here had the whole farm on his hands, an’ I’ll say it fer Ranz that ef it hadn’t been fer him them little young-uns would ’a’ gone hungry that year, er lived off the neighbors. The deacons fin’ly went to Nathe an’ ast him ef he thought he wuz heppin’ Ponnie any by neglectin’ her childern, an’ said he ort to git somebody who would take keer of ’em. They told him to marry some good woman that ’ud look after them like Ponnie wanted. An’ after they’d pestered him a while, he says: ‘All right, I’ll marry, but I don’t want a woman that’s crazy about me, an’ I don’t want to git crazy about _her_.’ He told ’em to find somebody that would be good to the young-uns an’ he’d be satisfied. The deacons went all around then, an’ got their wives to go, an’ they talked to all the single women as fur up as Sawmill Creek an’ as fur down as Nighthawk, but they’s all skeered to marry Nathe, an’ no wonder when he kept stuggin’ round the country lookin’ like the hind wheels o’ destruction. They thought there must be something awful quare about him er Ponnie wouldn’t ashot hersef. There wuz jest one widder----” “Ay, Mary Kempit,” said a voice, as Aunt Lizy paused, a little short of breath. “She had five young-uns.”