“Fer years,” said Rat, “all of us has called Sophy Perkins ‘the stinger,’ an’ she was a stinger, but I now move you, Mr. Chairman, that that title be hereby shifted offen ’er an’ put on that pink eyed turkey man.” The motion was unanimously carried and ordered spread upon the records that Sophy had left at the store. The meeting then adjourned. As we left I casually mentioned the fine weather we were having. “Yes, it’s been a phenonomous year,” replied Bill, thoughtfully. VIII THE PREDICAMENTS OF COLONEL PEETS[1] Near one of the picturesque bends of the river, about half a mile above the beginning of the Big Marsh, was the home of Col. Jasper M. Peets, a doughty warrior, who had fought valiantly for the Lost Cause, and was spending his declining years in a troubled twilight. Footnote 1: The author acknowledges his indebtedness to Mr. T. H. Ball, of Crown Point, Ind., for a portion of the material used in this story. The Colonel was an exotic. Perverse fates had transplanted him into a strange clime. All that anybody along the river knew of his history, up to the time of his arrival, had come from his own lips, and none of it was to his discredit. I had made his acquaintance at Posey’s store, where he frequently came for supplies. Muskrat Hyatt cautioned me not to have anything to do with him. “That feller’s bad medicine,” he declared. “He’s worse’n I am, an’ that’s sayin’ a whole lot. If you ever go down to his place, you keep yer cash in yer shoes an’ don’t you take ’em off while you’re there.” The little farm, with its dilapidated house and barn, had come to the Colonel as an inheritance from a distant relative whom he had never seen. The old pioneer, who had died there, had spent years of toil, patient and unremitting, in clearing the land and coaxing a precarious livelihood from the reluctant soil. He had left no will and the Colonel was the nearest surviving relative. The Colonel explained that this “fahm” and a “small passel of land down south” was all that he now possessed in the world. The “iron heel of the oppressah” had destroyed everything else. His “beautiful mansion on the Cumbe’land,” and all his “niggahs,” had been lost in the fury of the conflict. His “pussonal fo’tune” was a wreck. He was over seventy, and quite gray, but his erect military figure and splendid health somewhat belied his years. He was rather indolent in his movements, but as he sat in his hickory arm chair before the stone fire place, the lights that played over his storm beaten features pictured a warrior in repose.