“Grover Cleveland certainly is a good singer,” said Carolina. “He can carry the tune of every last hymn he hears ’em sing down to church and he can carry the words too, clean up to twenty verses I reckon, and what he can’t remember he can make up.” The old man laid down his implements, bowed himself to his “studyin’” attitude, and looked fondly and proudly at his grandson. Carolina let her eyes range the highroad. “Here comes old man Sumter a-drivin’ that ar’ Sal he bought over to Nantahala. She was round and plump as ary one of our mules when he brought her here, but now I declare she’s the gauntedest mule that travels the road. I reckon he’s jerked and jawed the flesh right off her bones.” “You say Cap’n Sumter’s a-comin’?” asked her father, and he got up and went out to the road side. At his signal his neighbour twitched Sal to a stand and stared at him without a relaxing line in his hard old face or a gleam of friendliness in his eyes. Colonel Ledbetter had pleasant information to impart. He lifted one foot to the hub of the clumsy fore wheel, rested an arm across his knees and looked hard into the sandy road lest his eyes should forestall his tongue as the bearer of good news. “You sold me them ’leven wa’nut trees on Sundown Hill for thirty dollars apiece, Cap’n Sumter?” “I reckon that’s ’bout how the case stands,” the grim face looked steadily at the smiling one and not a line softened. “Well, sir,” the pleasant eyes looked up with a lively sparkle that might have been borrowed from Grover Cleveland’s own, “I hadn’t examined them trees as close as I ought to, and ’pears like you hadn’t either; there’s a little mistake about one of ’em and I expected we’d better rectify it right now——” “G’long!” old man Sumter hit the mule a “lick,” saying viciously as she sprang forward, “You got the timber and I got the money and I don’t rectify no mistakes now; you’re old enough to have knowed what you was gittin’ ’fore you paid for it.” “Jes’ as you please Sam Sumter, jes’ as you please”; the indignant old gentleman made a gesture as one who gladly washes his hands of a responsibility and yielding to curiosity Sumter turned toward him. Colonel Ledbetter didn’t pause in his slow walk toward the house but he said in a tone of supreme indifference: “I’ve had my men up there a-fellin’ them trees and the biggest of ’em, the one furthest up the hill, is a curly walnut. Five years ago I sold one like it for twelve hundred dollars and I could have give you points ’bout sellin’ yours; but seein’ you don’t rectify no mistakes, why that’s all there is about it and we’ll stick to the bargain.” Again Sal was jerked to a stand and twisting round on a pivotal hand pressed to the seat, old man Sumter regarded his interlocutor with intense concern. But Colonel Ledbetter proceeded to the house without looking right or left and, disappointed and ireful, his neighbour went on his way.