“We’d had about seven er eight months o’ Nan when Nathe begun to look thin an’ show he wuz losin’ out. I b’lieve he got to thinkin’ that Nan wouldn’t mind heppin’ him off inter the next world ef she could do it sly. He kept Crick Sawyer hired, but I couldn’t find out what fer, he wuz so lazy an’ slept half of ever’ day. I got to teasin’ him about drawin’ pay fer gittin’ his breath, an’ he fired up an’ told me that Nathe had hired him to watch Nan at night, he’d got so skeered o’ what she might do when he wuz asleep. I felt ashamed o’ Nathe fer that, an’ I never let him know I’d found out what Crick’s job wuz. But I says: ‘Crick, ef Ponnie er Callie er Lu left here owin’ Nathe a hard time, Nan has shore paid it fer ’em.’ “She never done a thing to hep round the house, but she wuz always on time fer her meals. She’d take the head o’ the table, too, like she wuz the queen bee, though she hadn’t warmed kiver with Nathe sence the fust month she wuz there. She’d talk an’ laff an’ make fun o’ Crick, an’ wouldn’t let a soul pour the coffee but her. One day when she’d poured a cup fer Nathe, it sparkled up quare, an’ he throwed it inter the fireplace. It wuz that day that he went off to Carson an’ come back with a cousin of ourn, Lem Thatcher, who’d went out West an’ done well, an’ come back to see his kinfolks. He wuz a widower, an’ a little younger’n Nathe, an’ tolerable fair-lookin’ too. When Nan found out he had some money she put on her best dressin’ an’ smiled like a pickcher. When she wuz all flossied up an’ shiny, a man would have to look at her sort o’ easy out o’ one eye, till he found out her ways didn’t match up. We’s all past the place where Nan’s looks counted fer anything, but Lem wuzn’t, an’ when she’d plumb her eyes at him he’d wriggle an’ turn red. Nathe seen his chaince then, an’ told Lem he had to go inter Tennessee fer a few days, but fer him to make hissef at home an’ not think o’ leavin’ till he got back. He staid about a week, an’ when he come home Lem an’ Nan had been gone three days. I reckon they’s half-way to Californy by that time. She left a note tellin’ Nathe the sooner he got his divorce the better it would suit her an’ Lem, an’ he could keep the few dollars in his old sock, she said. She didn’t have no use fer ’em, an’ his boy, Baker, might need ’em. She had the note tacked up outside the front door. I wuzn’t at home the mornin’ they left, but Crick told me she made Lem tack the note up, an’ her laffin’ till you could hear her to the pasture gate. “Nathe got a divorce soon as he could, but it wuz a year er two ’fore anybody could speak to him about Nan ’thout him takin’ out his big handkercher an’ wipin’ his for’ed, he’d got inter sech a habit of it while she wuz around. As fer his house, it shore needed a good woman in it, Nan had been sech a tear-down.”