me to come back, an’ when I’d been gone about two year I come home. I found ever’thing runnin’ like sugar-water in sap-time. Nathe never went round the mill, er where Ann wuz, so fur as anybody knowed. When something had to be ’tended to over there, he’d git Lu to go. “‘Lu,’ he says one night at supper, ‘looks like we ortn’t to live here in this big house with ever’thing comfortable, an’ water piped from the mountain yander, an’ the fam’ly that works fer us puttin’ up with that smoky little hut over at the mill. When yore folks wuz out from Carson the other day I wuz ashamed to tell ’em that shack wuz on our farm. What you think about takin’ what I make tradin’ this year an’ fix ’em up a place they can keep clean an’ make look like something? Mis’ Baker’s always ready to come over here an’ give you a hand at anything, an’ we ort to make it easier at home fer a hard-workin’ woman like she is.’ “‘I’d hate to fix up a place fer that rowdy, Curt Lindsay,’ said Lu. ‘He stays drunk half o’ his time now.’ “‘You fix it, Lu, an’ I’ll drive him off er make him do better. The women-folks there are human, same as us, even ef Curt ain’t.’ “‘Yes,’ says Lu, ‘I git awfully sorry fer that pore little Ann. I don’t know what keeps her spirits up. She’s always singin’ when I go over there, er diggin’ in the yard round her flowers, an’ they say Curt beats her, too.’ “Nathe jumped up then, like he’d swallered a crumb too quick, an’ went out to the water-bucket. When he come back he wuz a little hoarse from chokin’, an’ he says: ‘You do what I told you, Lu. You know more about houses than I do. Fix it up so we won’t be ashamed of it anyway, an’ I can git a better man to live there ef I have to drive Curt off.’ “Lu ast me to hep her, an’ we got Mose Kimpit to boss the job, him that married Angie Sue afterwards, an’ I hired some men, an’ in no time Ann wuz livin’ in a little house that looked like a pickcher, but Curt wuz drinkin’ harder than ever. “‘You’ll have to get rid o’ him, Nathe,’ said Lu, an’ he said: ‘Well, let’s go over there an’ see about it.’ ‘Come on, Ranz,’ he said; ‘Curt might jump onto me an’ I might want some hep.’ Nathe wuzn’t afeard o’ nuthin’ this side o’ Jordan, an’ I laffed an’ went on with ’em. When we all got in a hunderd yards o’ the house we heard somebody screamin’, an’ Nathe got white as a dead man. ‘It’s Ann,’ says Lu; ‘he’s a-beatin’ her,’ an’ she begun to cry. Nathe says to me: ‘You stay here with Lu. I’ll fix him,’ an’ set off runnin’ like he’d gone mad. He didn’t open the door, jest kicked it in like it wuz glass. There wuzn’t any more screamin’, an’ when he come out he says: ‘Go in there, Ranz, an’ hep patch that feller up. I’ve give him two hours to git up an’ crawl off. He knows what the law does fer a man that lays his hand on a woman in the fix Ann’s in, an’ he’ll go. He don’t want to spend the next ten years in the pen.’