“Wha’d you say, Uncle Ag, ef we don’t he’p ye to-morr’, an’ call it square about them shotes you ain’t paid fer yit?” He was staggered, taken in the open, but rallied jauntily. “All right, boys; jest as you say.” Sam turned to me. “We didn’t tell ye ’bout them shotes Uncle Ag got, ’cause he was in sech a hole ’bout payin’ fer ’em, an’ nacherly we didn’t want to worry ye till we got it fixed. Now he gits our part o’ the shotes fer he’ppin’ us to-day, an’ we’re willin’ to take _yore_ part fer the markin’ you owes us, an’ wait on Uncle Ag fer it, seein’ we made sech a slow trade fer ye.” By then I was in a position to foretell just the amount of revenue that in all time to come I was going to derive from my claim. “We don’t want to take any downright money from ye, Mis’ Dolly,” explained Sam. “You’ve never been hard on us, an’ we kain’t afford to be hard on _you_. An’ by fixin’ it the way I said, ever’body’ll be satisfied, an’ you won’t be out nothin’ but a few shotes.” “And a few shotes, Sam, don’t matter when I’ve got the woods full of them.” “That’s what I wuz goin’ to say.” “A man with the woods full of hogs is in a pretty good fix, isn’t he?” “Jest about fat rich, Mis’ Dolly.” “Then you and Len are rich. The hog-claim is yours.” They thought it a joke at first, and I labored to convince them; then they insisted on my keeping half of it. “No, boys,” I persisted generously. “That would mix up our calculations. As it is, you’ll know what you’ve got, and I’ll know what I’ve got.” “You’re right about that,” said Sam. “I want to say, too, that this deal works backward. If there’s anybody owing for hogs, the debt is yours, and you needn’t ever bother me about it.” “An’ if any meddlin’ ol’ loafer comes tellin’ ye ’bout seein’ hogs here, there, an’ yander, in other folks’ pens, from time back,” said Sam, with the dignity of righteousness, “it won’t be wuth a blue bean to him.” “I’ll send him to you and Len. It will be your affair, not mine.” At that, Len came over to me. His face was serious but glowing. “I knowed you’s white,” he said, “but I didn’t know jest how white you wuz. Abe Siler’s beggin’ me underhand to leave you an’ work on his place. Next time he asts me, I’m goin’ to bust my knuckles on them two big front teeth o’ hisn.” Len, who was noted as a “clean-crop-man,” was the most coveted tenant within three townships. I had bought his loyalty cheap. Sam, of coarser but shrewder mind, spared me any disconcerting gratitude. Before their early bedtime I was to hear his comment to Coretta, who was shedding grateful tears. “Aw, shet up, K’rettie. I reckon she’s got sense enough to know that the woods full o’ hogs ain’t wuth much to a woman.” VII SERENA TAKES A BOARDER I “But where do they sleep?” my “foreign” friends would ask, with the impertinence of civilization, whenever they returned from a call at the shack where Len and Serena, after nightfall, compressed their spreading family into two rooms and a loft.