“In an hour or so,” answered the merchant, as he spat down into a cuspadore. “I'm waiting now for a turnout, and I've got some business to attend to.” “Collections to make, I'll bet my hat,” Pole laughed. “I thought mighty few folks was out on Main Street jest now; they know you are abroad in the land, an' want to save the'r socks.” “Do you reckon that's it, Baker?” said Mayhew, as he spat again. “I thought maybe it was because they was afraid you'd git on the war-path, and wanted to keep their skins whole.” The clerk and the planter laughed. “He got you that time, Pole,” the latter said, with a smile. “I'll acknowledge the corn,” and the mountaineer joined in the laugh good-naturedly. “To look at the old skinflint, settin' half asleep all the time, a body wouldn't think his tongue had any life to it. But I've seen the dem thing wiggle before. It was when thar was a trade up, though.” II AS they were driving into the country road, just beyond the straggling houses in the outskirts of the town, going towards the mountains, which lay along the western horizon like blue clouds settling to earth, the planter said: “I've seen you fishing and hunting with Mayhew's young partner, Nelson Floyd. You and he are rather intimate, are you not?” “Jest about as friendly as two men can be,” said Pole, “when one's rising in the world an' t'other is eternally at a stand-still or goin' down like a round rock on the side of a mountain. Or maybe I ought to say, when one of 'em has had the pluck to educate hisse'f, an' t'other hardly knows B from a bull's foot. I don't know, captain, why Nelson Floyd's friendly to me. I like him beca'se he is a man from his toe-nails to the end o' the longest hair on his head.” “I've heard a lot of good things about him,” remarked the planter, “and I understand, too, that he has his faults.” “They're part of his manhood,” said Pole, philosophically. “Show me a feller without faults, and I'll show you one that's too weak to have 'em. Nelson's got some o' the dust o' the broad road on his coat, an' yet I'd take his place in the general stampede when old Gabe blows his trumpet at the millennium a sight quicker than I'd stand in the shoes o' some o' these jack-leg preachers. I tell you, Captain Duncan, ef the Lord's goin' to make favorites o' some o' the long-faced hypocrits I know, that is robbin' widows an' orphans in the week an' prayin' an' shoutin' on Sunday to pull the wool over folks' eyes, me an' Him won't gee in the hereafter. You know some'n about that boy's start in life, don't you, captain?” “Not much, I must own,” answered the planter.