"An ill word is spoke 'bout him ginerally round the mounting," said the old woman, who had filled and lighted her pipe, and was now trying to crowd down the charge, so to speak, without scorching too severely her callous fore-finger. "I hev hearn folks 'low ez he hev got so turrible crazy ez he oughter be sent away an' shet up in jail. An' it 'pears like ter me ez that word air jestice. The critter's fursaken." "Fursaken or no fursaken, he ain't goin' ter be jailed fur nothin',--'ceptin' that the hand o' the Lord air laid too heavy on him. I can't lighten its weight. I'm mortial myself. The rider says thar's some holp in prayer. I hain't seen it yit, though I hev been toler'ble busy lately a-workin' in metal, one way an' another. What good air it goin' ter do the mounting ter hev 'Lijah jailed, stiddier goin' round the woods a-talkin' ter the grasshoppers an' squir'ls, ez seem ter actially know the critter, an' bein' ez happy ez they air, 'ceptin' when he gits it inter his noodle, like he sometimes do, ez he ain't edzactly like other folks be?" He paused. Those strange visitants trembled again upon his smoke-blackened lids. "Fursaken or no," he cried impulsively, "the man ez tries ter git him jailed will 'low ez he air fursaken his own self, afore I gits done with him!" "'Vander Price," said the old woman rebukingly, "ye talk like ye hain't got good sense yerself." She sat down on a rock embedded in the ferns by Lost Creek, and pulled deliberately at her long cob-pipe. Then she too turned her faded eyes upon the vast landscape, in which she had seen no change, save the changing season and the waxing or the waning of the day, since first her life had opened upon it. That level line of pale blue in the poetic distance had become faintly roseate. The great bronze-green ranges nearer at hand were assuming a royal purple. Shadows went skulking down the valley. Across the amber zenith an eagle was flying homeward. Her mechanical glance followed the sweeping, majestic curves, as the bird dropped to its nest in the wild fastnesses of Pine Mountain, that towered, rugged and severe of outline, against the crimson west. A cow-bell jangled in the laurel. "Old Suke's a-comin' home ez partic'lar an' percise ez ef she hed her calf thar yit. I hev traded Suke's calf ter my merried daughter M'ria,--her ez merried Amos Baker, in the Cove. The old brindle can't somehow onderstan' the natur' o' the bargain, an' kems up every night moo-ing, mighty disapp'inted. 'Twarn't much shakes of a calf, nohow, an' I stood toler'ble well arter the trade."