“The verses are all jest alike ’cept the tree is different ever’ time. That little bird builds its nest in nineteen trees ’fore the song is done; an’ it’s ’lowable fer you to put in more if you want to an’ can think of ’em. I thought of a lot--the mulberry, the sourwood, the weepin’ willer, an’ so many more I was nigh an’ hour gittin’ through. Harvey never said a word when I stopped; he was awake though, fer I seen him move. But I didn’t expect anything from him. The first day we’s out it wuz ‘Thank ’e, Sam,’ all the time. But after we got inter the deep woods where I was his rale dependance, I never heard it oncet. “Next mornin’ his feet wuz so sore he couldn’t let his boots tech ’em. ‘Sam,’ he says, ‘what’ll ye take fer that taller?’ I told him I wasn’t tradin’ it; if he needed it wuss’n I did, he was welcome. I could make out ef I had a pair o’ easy socks. ‘Yer ain’t used them silk ones yit, have ye?’ I says. He took ’em out of his kit an’ handed ’em to me ’thout openin’ his mouth; though I told him over agin that he was welcome to the taller. But these furriners ain’t got much manners anyhow, if you notice ’em close. “He said he hadn’t shet his eyes, an’ he’d nearly froze, like as if I ought to ’a’ set up an’ kept the fire goin’. I was glad enough to git him in home that mornin’; an’ when he wants a friend to go bear-huntin’ with him agin, he’ll have to look furder’n me. We ain’t quarrelled though. That needn’t worry ye a bit. When I left him yisterday he says, ‘Sam, yer a ’tellergent feller,’ an’ he stuck out his hand.” “You took it, Sam?” “Oh, ay, I took it. But,” he added--for in those days in Unakasia every man was his own Shakespeare--“I knew he was jest aflowerin’ me.” V EVVIE: SOMEWHAT MARRIED I The Kanes were a deserving family, tainted with inarticulate ambition. I was glad to have them as rather distant neighbors instead of “share-croppers.” Evvie, the oldest child, possessed beauty of the appealing sort that stirs even the hurried passer-by with a feeling of responsibility. As a tenant’s daughter she would have troubled my sleep. Her mother was a Merlin and usually stopped to see me when on her way to visit some member of the clan. “Hypnotic,” though an intolerably cheapened word, must be used in describing the effect that my typewriter seemed to have on Mrs. Kane. I did not understand this until the day that she brought Evvie with her. “She hain’t strong, Evvie. I kain’t git her to stay with a hoe long ’nough fer me to go in an’ git the dinner. I say to her, ‘Evvie, you take my place an’ let me go in,’ an’ she’ll try fer a bit, but her poppie’ll see her drappin’ back an’ gittin’ her breath hard, an’ he’ll say, ‘You run ’long now, Evvie, an’ he’p yer mother,’ an’ in she’ll come. So I’ve got in the way o’ lettin’ her git the dinner by herse’f an’ I stay with the hoe.” “But she can’t be more than ten,” I said.