Andy Longwood laughed in an embarrassed fashion, by way of making an appropriate response. Some crows—they seemed very black—were cawing loudly from the top of a full-leaved hickory-tree, that blazed a resplendent, illuminated yellow down by the fence; all the breadth of the sere cornfield hard by was doubly pallid in tint, in contrast with this flaring ochreous splendor; the sky was an intenser blue where the foliage was imposed upon its expanse, the farthest mountains duskily purple, while below the branches of the tree, near to the great dark bole, the roofs of the Settlement showed, the glimmer of the frost on the eaves not altogether spent, albeit the sun was high, the curling tendrils of smoke, blue, and misty, and timorous, as they crept out of the clay-and-stick chimneys. Eli Strobe’s eyes dwelt on the little hamlet for a moment. “What’s the folks in the Settlemint a-sayin’ ’bout me; Andy?” he asked unexpectedly. “I ain’t seen nobody but the gals an’ mam, ez dunno nuthin’ ’bout folks, an’ politics, an’ sech things ez a body wants ter hear ’bout; an’ the old doctor, ez seems ter be a good, useful kind o’ consarn, but ’pears ter think a man oughter set still all day an’ study ’bout’n his liver, stiddier politics an’ his office what he hev done been ’lected ter hold, an’ will de-strac’ his mind ef he gits ter thinkin’ ’bout enny sech ez them. Actially, I b’lieve that old man would hev hed me darnin’ stockin’s, ef I hedn’t made a stan’ agin him. I tried ter spound a pint o’ law ter him t’other day, an’ he seemed ter take a fit till he got me ter talkin’ ’bout craps an’ gyardin truck,—turnips, an’ inguns, an’ sech, ez I don’t keer nuthin’ ’bout. I hain’t hearn nuthin’ ’bout the returns o’ the ’lection ’n’ nuthin’. What air they sayin’ ’bout’n me in the Settlemint, Andy?” The young man was about to respond, when Marcella precipitately forestalled him:— “They don’t say nuthin’ nor do nuthin’ in this Settlemint. Brumsaidge air the lonesomest place in these hyar mountings. Sech kerryin’s-on they hev, though, in Piomingo Cove! An’ t’other night they hed a dancin’party over on Chilhowee.”