Nancy did not confine her practice to what she would have called humans, but doctored a horse or a cow with equal success. One cold spring a little chicken had its feet frozen in the wet barnyard so badly that it lost one of them, and Nancy, who had taken the poor mite into the house and nursed it till she loved it, constructed for it a wooden leg consisting of a small, light peg strapped to the stump. And thereafter Nicodemus, a rooster who must now belie the name since he could not cling to a perch with his single foot, became an institution in the Card household. Jephthah Turrentine was a natural bone-setter, and was sent for far and near to reduce a dislocation or bandage a broken limb. In the pursuit of this which came to be almost a profession, he acquired a good knowledge of tending upon the sick, and the bitterness of rival practitioners was added to the score between him and Nancy. The case of Nicodemus furnished the man with a chance to call the woman a chicken doctor, and the name appealing to the humorous side of mountain character stuck to her, greatly to her disgust. Aunt Nancy's dooryard was famous for its flowers, being a riot of pied bloom from March till December. Even now fire-in-the-bush and bridal wreath made gay the borders. "Good land, Jude Barrier!" called Nancy herself. "You're as wet as a drownded rat. 'Light and come in." Old Turrentine permitted his niece to clamber from Selim, and secure him and both mules. "Whar's the boys?" he inquired in a great, sonorous bass, the deep, true-pitched voice promised by the contours of strong bony arches under heavy brows and the strong nose-bridge. "In jail," responded Judith laconically, turning to enter the gate. Then, as she walked up the hard-trodden clay path between the tossing, dripping heads of daffodils, "Uncle Jep, did you know Creed Bonbright's daddy?" "In jail!" echoed Nancy Card, making a pretence of trying to suppress a titter, and thereby rendering it more offensive. "Ain't they beginnin' ruther young?" Tall old Jephthah got to his feet, knocked the ashes from his pipe and put it in his pocket. "Who tuck 'em?" he inquired briefly, but with a fierce undernote in his tones. "What was they tuck fer?" "I never noticed," said Judith, standing on the step before them, wringing the wet from her black calico riding skirt. "Nobody named it to me what they was tuck fer. I was talkin' to Creed Bonbright, and he 'lowed to find out. He said that was his business." "Creed Bonbright," echoed her uncle; "what's he got to do with it? He's been livin' down in Hepzibah studyin' to be a lawyer--did he have Jeff and Andy jailed?"