So Mrs. Haynes’s invitation was accepted. Serena and I were to stay until the next day, but Len and the daughter, Lonie, were to return that evening to look after the children, the cows, and the chickens. The brethren who had come out from Carson returned to town, with the exception of Lawyer Jenkins, who, probably, was thinking of profitable affiliations with the remote but fertile valley. I observed him reading the headstones around the new-made grave, and it seemed to me that he was afflicted with a growing concern. He turned, with a question, to the man nearest him, who happened to be Len. “Am I to understand that our good brother was married four times?” “You shore air,” said Len. “There lays four of as good wives as a man ever had. Them tombstones don’t tell no lies. They’s all ’fore my time, savin’ Aunt Lindy, his last ’un, but I’ve hearn enough to know what they wuz.” “But four? Isn’t it a little unusual?” “Well, maybe it is, but Uncle Nathe wuzn’t no hand to set at home by hissef.” At that moment, to Len’s apparent relief, Aunt Lizy came up, and we found that Mr. Jenkins also had accepted her invitation. He walked with her husband, Uncle Dan’l Haynes, and I gathered from drifting fragments of their conversation that Mr. Jenkins was still on the trail of Uncle Nathe’s connubial history. At the dinner-table he pleased all of the guests by introducing the topic from which they were politely holding back. “I have been learning from our kind host,” he said, eying with favor his selected piece of fried chicken, “what this loss means to the community.” “Yes,” some one responded, “it knocks all of us, losin’ Nathe does.” “There is some property too, I believe. I trust there is harmony among the heirs.” “They’re all behavin’ fine,” said Aunt Lizy, with some heartiness. “Our brother was married several times, I understand. Did--er--all of his wives leave issue?” “Young-uns? No, Aunt Lindy never had any, ner Lu Siler, but Callie had a little feller that died--Rufe, they called him. An’ Ponnie, his fust wife, left four, all livin’ yit. They git along together fust-rate.” “I wonder what Ponnie would ’a’ said,” reflected Uncle Dan’l, “ef somebody had told her Nathe wouldn’t be buried alongside o’ her.” “Well,” said Uncle Ranz, “I’d ruther not hear what Ponnie would ’a’ said.” “I say it ought to ’a’ been Lindy he wuz laid by,” asserted Aunt Lizy. “She lived with him the longest an’ worked the hardest.” “She didn’t think a grain more o’ him than Lu Siler did,” returned Uncle Dan’l. “Our brother expressed no preference?” inquired Mr. Jenkins. “You mean which un did he want to lay ’longside of? No, he wuzn’t a man to put one wife ’fore another. He left that to us.” “Very thoughtful, I take it,” said the lawyer. “A strong character certainly. I am sorry I never knew him.” And he mused a little on the bed-rock qualities of the old mountaineer.