“Well, Curt went off, an’ Mis’ Baker wrote fer a son she had over on Cowee to come an’ take his place on the farm, an’ they all lived there in the little house quiet as could be. The whole country wuz braggin’ on the way Nathe had settled with Curt, though some said he ort to have tuk him up an’ let him go to the pen. Anybody that ’ud beat a little thing like Ann ort to git the worst the law could lay on him. “In about three months Ann’s baby wuz born, an’ Lu acted like she thought it wuz hern, the way she took keer of it, an’ wuz over there half the time. She begged Nathe to go with her to see it, but he wouldn’t. That wuz woman’s business, he said. Things went on quiet-like fer two or three years, maybe four. Angie Sue got through school an’ married Mose Kempit. She didn’t do much fer hersef, considerin’ the chaince they give her. She had Ponnie’s temper, too, but Ponnie had a big heart along with her temper, an’ Angie Sue never had no more heart than a hornet’s got. Little Rosie wuz a-growin’ up, an’ the boys, Herb an’ Sam, wuz nearly men. They wuz quiet boys, not wuth much one way er t’other. Ann’s brother got married, an’ Nathe fixed him a house not fur from the other one, an’ Ann an’ her mother lived by thersevs. Mis’ Baker, she ’tended to the mill. The boy wuz named Baker, fer Ann’s father, an’ folks called him little Bake Lindsay. “Well, we’s livin’ along, an’ ever’body comfortable, when one day in the fall when the woods wuz a-turnin’, Lu says to me: ‘Ranz, s’pose we take Rosie an’ the boys an’ go hunt chestnuts to-day? I ain’t been in the woods this year.’ That suited me, an’ we all went over to the big hill about a quarter of a mile to the back of Ann’s house. Nathe wuzn’t along. He’d got a letter the day before tellin’ him to come to Carson about a trade, an’ he’d set off walkin’ that mornin’, not lettin’ the boys drive him to Scatter to hit the train. It wuz too much trouble, he said, an’ he liked to walk. He wuz in fine health then, his skin clear pink, an’ not a gray hair in his head. Lu wuz feelin’ a little lonesome, I reckon, after he set off, an’ that’s what made her hit on goin’ fer chestnuts. We had a good time, an’ picked up a lot, but we didn’t go up the big hill any furder than the oak spring. Me an’ Lu an’ Rosie set down by the spring to rest a bit, an’ the boys said they’d shammuck along home an’ carry the chestnuts. We had about two flour-pokes full. While we’s settin’ there, me an’ Lu an’ Rosie, we heard somebody laffin’ way up at the top o’ the hill. ‘There’s somebody else out to-day,’ said Lu. ‘Let’s wait an’ see who it is.’ We knowed from the way the voices sounded that whoever wuz up there had started down. I sort o’ felt like I knowed the man’s voice, the way he wuz laffin’, an’ I set there with my eye-teeth a-gittin’ loose, till right out o’ the woods about fifty yards above us come Nathe an’ Ann. They come on down, not seein’ us till they wuz right on us, but we saw them all right.