"Well, well, Nancy!" she exclaimed, as she seated herself upon a bench by the door and began to fan herself with a corner of a snowy kerchief that crossed her ample bosom. "Looks like you have begun sawing and nailing at the Craddock family estate pretty early in the action though it's none too soon, and mighty glad I am to see you do it while there is still a little odd lumber left. I've always said that it's women folks that prop a family and it will soon tumble without 'em. I am so glad you've come, honeybunch, that tears are laughing themselves out of the corner of my eyes." This time the white kerchief was dabbed over the keen blue eyes. "Is it all--very--very bad, Mrs.--I mean, Aunt Mary?" I asked, as I laid down my dull-toothed instrument for the dissection of the plank, and sank cross-legged on the barn floor in front of her. "Oh, it might be worse," she answered as she smiled again with resolution. "Rufus has eleven nice hogs and feed enough for them until summer, thanks to the help of Adam in tending the ten-acre river-bottom field, which they made produce more than any one else in the river bend got off of fifty. Nobody can take the house, because it is hitched on to you with entailment, and though the croppers have skimmed off all the cream of the land, the clay bottom of it is obliged to be yours. Now that you and William have come with a little money the fields can all be restored. Adam will help you like he did Hiram Wade down the road there. It only cost him about ten dollars to the acre. "But--but father and I--that is, Aunt Mary, you know father has lost all his property and Uncle Cradd assured us that--that there was plenty for us all at Elmnest," I said in a faltering tone of voice as a feeling of descending tragedy struck into my heart. "Cradd and Rufus have lived on hog, head, heels, and tail for over a year, with nothing else but the corn meal that Rufus trades meat with Silas for. I thought, honeybunch, when I saw you coming so stylish and beautiful with those none-such chickens that you must have been bringing a silk purse sewed with gold thread with you. I said to Silas as he put out the lamp last night, 'The good Lord may let His deliverance horses lag along the track, but He always drives them in on the home stretch for His own, of which Moseby Craddock is one.' 'Why, she's so fine she can't eat eggs outen chickens that costs less than maybe a hundred dollars the dozen,' answered Silas to me as he put out the cat." "They cost eight hundred and fifty dollars and they are all I have got in the world. Father gave up everything, and I sold my clothes and the cars to buy back his library and--and the chickens," I said with the terror pressing still more heavily down upon me.