the first year he was married to Lu. He said he wanted her to have ever’thing as nice as she had it in Carson when she wuz livin’ with Jim Siler. It wuz in them years that Nathe sort o’ stept up in life.” Uncle Ranz was forced to take breath, though he knew that Aunt Lizy would be in at the breach. “Nathe never got bigetty though,” she said. “It wuz about that time that he got to lookin’ round an’ heppin’ folks in hard luck. He wuz always ready with the loan of a cow fer a widder, er a plough-critter fer new-married couples, er a sack o’ meal, an’ sometimes a bit o’ money that he wuzn’t too pertickler about gittin’ back. I’ve said many a time that Silver Valley owed a lot to Lu Siler fer makin’ a changed man out o’ Nathe.” “You want to start that old argyment, Lizy, an’ you can have it. I say, an’ I’ll always say, it wuz Ann that changed Nathe, an’ not Lu Siler.” “Ann!” The contempt of the elect was in Aunt Lizy’s voice. She reached into her pocket for her snuff. Only snuff could reconcile her to the existence of Ann. Uncle Ranz turned to his more passive hearers. “There ain’t any man, er woman nuther, in this country,” he said, “who knows more about that than I do. It begun ’long in the last year o’ Callie’s lifetime, an’ I reckon I wuz purty keen on what wuz happenin’ round Callie. Nathe had a little ol’ mill on one end o’ his farm, fer grindin’ corn fer hissef an’ his neighbors. It’s there yit, only it’s been built all over. An’ he had a little ol’ log house settin’ close to the mill, where he kept a fam’ly to ’tend to the grindin’ an’ hep on the farm. He ’lowed the man could work on the farm, an’ his wife could tend to the mill, in a pinch anyways. Well, Curt Lindsay, he come over from round Cowee an’ ast fer the place. He said he wuz married, an’ his wife’s mother wuz livin’ with ’em, an’ she could handy ’tend to the mill. His wife wuzn’t much stout, an’ he didn’t count on gittin’ anything out of her but a little housekeepin’, an’ maybe hoein’ in the patches. An’ Nathe told him to come on. Curt wuz a big feller an’ looked like he’d make a good hand. I told Nathe so mysef, an’ there’s one more time I’d ’a’ done better ef I’d kept my mouth shet. Well, they come on, an’ the mother looked like all she knowed wuz hard work an’ more of it. But Ann, Curt’s wife, she looked like a hummin’-bird round a rosey-bush. The mother, that ’uz Mis’ Baker, told me Ann had never been much strong an’ her daddy, up till he died a little ’fore that, had never let anything be put on her too hard. Ann wuz willin’ enough, but they had to put it on her light, er she’d git down sick. Curt didn’t keer one way er another so the work got done. Ann had married him when she wuz fourteen, an’ she wuzn’t more’n up’rds o’ fifteen when she come to live on Nathe’s place. Nathe wuz a little above thirty-five, an’ had seen his troubles, but they hadn’t put the years on him. When he wuz smoothed up, folks said ef his good looks wuz