CHAPTER IX. WALL, Josiah give up and crumpled down along the middle of the forenoon, and he looked happy as a king after he give up his project (it wuz only ambition that wuz a goarin’ him and a leadin’ him around). And he and Snow (the darlin’!) had gone out a walkin’ in the grounds— And I wuz a settin’ alone on the veranda by the side of Boy’s cradle, Genieve havin’ gone to the village to get some thread— When Victor come over on a errant. He come to bring a note over from Mrs. Seybert to my daughter Maggie, and I told him I would give it to her jest as soon as she returned and come back. She had gone out ridin’ with Thomas Jefferson. And I, feelin’ kinder opset and mauger through what I had went through with my pardner, thought it would sort o’ take up my mind and recooperate me to talk a little with Victor (I had always liked him from the first minute I see him). And so at my request he sot down on the veranda, and we had a little talk. I guess, too, he was dretful willin’ to talk with me, so’s to sort to waste the time and linger till Genieve got back. And before some time had passed away I turned the conversation onto that skeme of hisen. I had hearn a sight about it first and last, and kinder hankered to-day (for reasons given prior and beforehand) to hear more. And he went on perfectly eloquent about it—he couldn’t help gettin’ all worked up about it every time he got to talkin’ about it; and yet he talked with good sound sense, and he see all the dangers and difficulties in the way, and his mind wuz sot on the best way of surmountin’ and gettin’ over ’em. Genieve’s mind wuz such she naterelly looked so sort o’ high that she couldn’t see much besides the sun-lit glorified mountains of the high lands and the beauty of the Gole. But Victor see the rough road that led down through rocky defiles and through the deep wilderness; he see and counted all the lions that wuz in the path between this and the Promised Land, and his hull mind wuz sot on gettin’ by ’em and slayin’ ’em; but he heard their roars plain, every one of ’em. The name of the two biggest lions that lay in the road ahead of him a roarin’ at him wuz Ignorance and Greed. One of ’em had black skin, black as a coal, and the other wuz light-complected. How to get by them lions wuz his first thought, for they lay watchin’ every move he made at the very beginnin’ of the road that led out to Canaan. The animal Ignorance wuz too gross and heavy and sensual to even try to get out of the path where it must have known it wuz in danger of bein’ crushed to death and trampled down; it wuz too thick-headed to even lift its eyes and look off into a more sun-lighted place; it lay there, down in the dark mud, as heavy, as lifeless, as filthy as the dark soil in which it crouched.