With this grateful stab in my heart I left her; and Katy went with me to relate a story her papa had brought home. She pronounced “papa” as did all the children, like the flower, poppy, with a soft trail at the end, making a dear word more dear. Katy was eleven, the daughter of Sam’s first wife. When war stretched a hand into the Unakas, and one by one, then dozen by dozen, the young men began to disappear, the people wondered more and more what it was about. As a rule, they were not reached by the daily papers which feed us truth and bathe us in illumination; and Katy’s story showed how they had adapted the chief argument that had sifted to them. “There was a cripple, and he was a German. He was goin’ over to Briartown, and stopped at a man’s house. The man and woman were gone to the store. The childern were cookin’ some beans for dinner. The cripple ast to stir the beans. An’ he put something into the pot. Some powder or something. The woman come home and the childern told her. The man come home and the woman told him. They took up the dinner and ast the German to set to the table. He took a chair and passed the beans. Nobody took any. Then the man said: ‘Have some beans yerself.’ But the German said he wouldn’t choose any. Then the man got his gun, and said: ‘You will eat them beans or die.’ The German took some of the beans. And in an hour his tongue was swelled out of his head.” She paused, lifting anxious eyes, to know if I thought the story was true. “Yes, Katy,” I answered unflinchingly. Could such a climax be chance invention? A mere accident of art? “Papa says it is true, for he found a cripple on the Briartown road one day an’ let him ride his horse for a mile. He couldn’t speak plain like papa, an’ he knows it was that German, but he don’t see how Abraham Ludd and Jim Dow let him git by.” She was speaking of two neighbor boys in the service. One had risen to a captaincy, the other had been decorated. “Jim Dow----” “Captain Dow, Katy,” said I. “He don’t write to Nellie Ludd any more.” “Did Nellie tell you?” “No, but she’s quit goin’ to the post-office. She’s ashamed to ast an’ git nothin’ every time.” I wondered if that was why Nellie flitted so ghost-like about the hills, as difficult to capture as a bird fearing human hurt. About supper-time I again called at the cabin, and as I sat by the superfluous fire, I heard Coretta say: “Granpap, please pass the sorghum to little Dick.” And granpap, like a stone image with a movable arm, passed the sorghum.