"Miss Lady," said he, "you never did know how glad I am to have you back here again. Why, a while ago I didn't care what became of me, or of anything else. I wasn't even half-training my pack of dogs. Now I have got more'n fifty of the best hounds that ever run a trail, and with you to take care of the cripples and the puppies, it certainly looks like the old pack is going to last a while yet. Yes, you surely are right useful on the place." "You are not any gladder than I am," said Miss Lady. "I've every reason in the world to be glad." "Well," said Blount, seating himself apart on the end of the board- pile, "I've got a few, myself. This here is a heap better than being in jail, or maybe getting hung." "Don't talk about it," said Miss Lady, shuddering. "I don't want to think--" "Well, it was Jack Eddring got us out of it all, I reckon," said Blount, breaking off a splinter from the board. "Did you ever stop to think, Miss Lady, that he's a powerful fine young man?" "Why do you always talk about him?" said Miss Lady, turning, to the sudden discomfort of one of the puppies. "Every time anything comes up--" "Now, hold on," said Blount, "you don't say a word against that young man while I'm around. I want to tell you that fellow has showed me a heap. He's a square, hard-working man, as honest as the day is long, straight as a string, square as they make 'em, and not afraid of nothing on earth. I ask him to come down here and go b'ah hunting. He always says he has to work--works harder than any nigger I ever had on the place. Now that's what he done showed me. I reckon he'd be a good sort of model for this whole southern country to-day. He's proof enough to my mind that a man can work, and do his own work, and still be a gentleman. I've been right lazy in my time, I reckon, b'ah hunting and that sort of thing, but now I come to think it all over, I don't know but what Jack Eddring is as near right as anybody I know of. He allows he's got something to _do_ in this world, and he's starting out to do it. He sort of showed me that maybe that's about the best thing a man can do with himself--just work. "Besides, Miss Lady,"--and here Blount turned upon her suddenly, "that man's done a heap for you." "Oh, well--" began Miss Lady. "And he thinks a heap of you. That is,"--and here Blount undertook to save himself from what he swiftly fancied might be indiscretion-- "he's like all of us people down in here, you know. Now they tell me that up North, in the big cities where I've never been at, there's so many women that folks think they're right common. I don't believe that, nohow, for it don't stand to reason. Now we-all know that a woman is something a good ways off, and high up and hard to reach. That's the way we-all feel. But now even if we allow it that way, I want to say that Jack Eddring has done a heap for you, Miss Lady, that maybe you don't know about. He didn't have to do it, either."