"Yes," answered Uncle Tucker slowly, "it's about the mortgage, and I'm mighty sorry to have to tell you, but I reckon I'll have to come to accepting you from the Lord as a rod and staff to hobble on. I--I had that settlement with the Senator this evening 'fore he left and it came pretty nigh winding me to see how things stood. Instead of a little more'n one hundred dollars behind in the interest we are mighty near on to six, and by right figures, too. It just hasn't measured out any year, and I never stopped to count it at so much. Gid was mighty kind about it and said never mind, let it run, but--but I'm not settled in my mind it's right to hold on like this; he maybe didn't mean it, but before dinner he dropped a word about being mighty hard pressed for money to keep up this here white ribbon contest he's a-running against his own former record. No, I'm not settled in my mind about the rights of it," and with this uneasy reiteration Uncle Tucker raised his big eyes to Rose Mary in which lay the exact quest for the path of honor that she had met in the young eyes of the General not two hours before. In fact, Uncle Tucker's eyes were so like Stonie's in their mournful demand for a decision from her that Rose Mary's tender heart throbbed with sympathy but sank with dismay at again having the decision of a question of masculine ethics presented to her. "I just don't know what to say, Uncle Tucker," she faltered, thus failing him in his crisis more completely than she had the boy. "The time for saying has passed, and I'm afraid to look forwards to what we may have to do," answered Uncle Tucker quietly. "After Gid was gone on up the road I walked over to Tilting Rock and sat down with my pipe to think it all over. My eyes are a-getting kinder dim now, but as far as I could see in most all directions was land that I had always called mine since I come into a man's estate. And there is none of it that has ever had a deed writ aginst it since that first Alloway got it in a grant from Virginy. There is meadow land and corn hillside, creeks for stock and woodlands for shelter, and the Alloways before me have fenced it solid and tended it honest, with return enrichment for every crop. And now it has come to me in my old age to let it go into the hands of strangers--sold by my own flesh and blood for a mess of pottage, he not knowing what he did I will believe, God help me. I'm resting him and the judgment of him in the arms of Mercy, but my living folks have got to have an earthly shelter. Can you see a way, child? As I say, my eyes are a-getting dim."