"Jacob Ensley at your service, Miss," he answered with easy dignity. "Now, will it be the bottle of beer I shall bring you? Or there's a new drink I might mix fer you that a young gentleman friend of mine from New York has taught me, and with a good Irish name of Thomas Collins--the drink, not the young gentleman." Nickols had been living on Tom Collins for the last month and I instantly knew that I recognized the young friend from New York. Also my wits were at a branching of the road and I didn't know just what to do or say as Jacob waited with easy courtesy for my decision. And again I was too much perturbed for invention and had to speak out the truth. "I'm Charlotte Powers, Mr. Ensley, and I came down to see your daughter, Martha," I said, looking directly into his clear friendly eyes which I saw instantly darken with a storm as the smile left his nice mouth and it hardened into a straight line. "I'm sorry, Miss Powers, but my Martha ain't at home right now to you, and I don't know when she will be. Is that all I can do for you? These berries now, from over at Paradise Ridge?" And with the ease of a man of the great upper world Jacob Ensley of the lower walks of life put me out of the door of his private life into the ranks of the meddler and shut it in my face. I acknowledged to myself that my rebuff was justifiable and I was about to make an exit from the scene as gracefully as possible with a box of the really delicious berries under my arm when a cry of terror in a child's voice came from somewhere at the back of the grocery and together the grocer and I ran to see what the matter could be. And at the heels of the proprietor I then penetrated the blind of the grocery and entered the Last Chance. CHAPTER XII THE TENACIOUS TURTLE "It's Martha's Stray," the big man gasped in a kind of impatient alarm. "I just left him here a minute ago to go front." Together he and I started around the long room with its bar on the one side backed up by a mirror whose gilt frame was swathed in mosquito netting and on either side of which were shelves bearing pyramids of bottles. On the bar at one end were piled oranges and at the other lemons and limes whose sophistication seemed out of place somehow in the Settlement in the Harpeth Valley. All the trappings that I judge would go with the dispensing of liquor were present, but our eyes could discover no small child and we stood together and waited anxiously. "He's got me toe, me toe, and won't let go. He's chewing it off!" at last came a lusty yell from just outside a back door that led out into a side yard from behind the bar, and with one accord the proprietor of the Last Chance and I ran to the scene of the devouring. And as we ran I heard a door slam in the rooms back of the bar and we met Martha face to face on the scene of action. I shall never forget the picture that confronted me there in that little back yard upon which the bar of the Last Chance opened, and I somehow never want to.