divided around, they’d make ever’body in the settlement look passable, even countin’ Sary Copp, who had a caved-in nose an’ scrofula o’ the jaw. But Nathe wuz fur from bein’ as good as he wuz good-lookin’. I reckon he wuz the furdest from the Amen row right then that he ever wuz in his life. He’d put a mortgage on his farm to git spendin’ money, an’ he wuz runnin’ round spendin’ it. ‘Ranz,’ he says to me, ‘I don’t keer much about women, but what’s a feller to do with hissef?’ “An’ then Ann moved in. ‘Let’s go over,’ Nathe says to me one day, ‘an’ see ef Curt’s got settled. Maybe he’ll need some hep about something.’ ‘All right,’ says I, an’ we went. Looked like there wuzn’t nobody at home when we come up. Nathe walked up big an’ pounded on the door till I wished there wuzn’t anybody in there to hear him. Then Ann opened the door. Nathe hadn’t ever seen her ’fore that, an’ when she looked up, a bit skeered, an’ her eyes as blue as a prize ribbon at a fair, Nathe fell back inter the yard like she’d pinted a gun at him. I ask her how her folks wuz, seein’ Nathe wuzn’t goin’ to talk, an’ she said they’s well, an’ her mother wuz in the house, wouldn’t we come in, an’ Curt wuz gone to Carson to git some things they needed fer housekeepin’. “‘What things?’ says Nathe, gittin’ over his lock-jaw, an’ when she told him, he says: ‘Tell yer mother to come over to the house an’ my wife’ll give her anything you’re needin’.’ Then he went off. I follered him, an’ he walked along like a wooden man till we got nigh home, then he says: ‘Ranz, I reckon I’d better look after things round here a little closer’n I been adoin’.’ An’ from that minute Nathe wuz changed, an’ he hadn’t ever set eyes on Lu Siler. Callie wuz still alive, an’ she seemed awfully hepped up about Nathe. She talked to me of how he wuz takin’ holt like he raley owned the place, an’ it wouldn’t be long till he’d lift the mortgage, an’ maybe send Angie Sue to Carson to school. But Callie wuz too worn out by that time fer any change to do her downright good, an’ she died in the spring, like I wuz tellin’ ye. Then Nathe married Lu. I ain’t sayin’ my own half-brother married a woman fer what she had, but I do say that he’d got to be sort o’ cravin’. Where he’d spent a dollar before, free as water, looked like he wuz tryin’ to save three. He wuz runnin’ the farm close, an’ raisin’ ever’thing we et purty nigh, but coffee an’ sugar, an’ wuz watchin’ his tradin’ right sharp, though when Lu got there he built her a nice house, like I said, with her own money, an’ he went around the country with her whenever she wanted him to, an’ didn’t mind spendin’ on his lodge a bit ’er heppin’ folks like Lizy wuz tellin’ ye. I quit livin’ at Nathe’s an’ went over inter Tennessee. Callie wuz on my mind, more’n when she’d been livin’, seemed like, an’ on top o’ that I wuz afeard Nathe an’ Lu were goin’ to have fallin’ weather. I thought ef he wuz in fer a mess I’d seen enough o’ his troubles. But he kept writin’ fer