On the porch of the next cabin stood a great loom and two spinning wheels. The woman of the house was out in the middle of the branch, washing wool by treading it in a loose basket. She let down her skirts, dried her hands on her apron, and hurried toward the guests, taking them through a clean-swept yard into a clean-swept cabin. Everything was clean--the floor, the chairs, the three fat beds in the room, the broad hearth, her own gnarled hands and striped homespun dress and apron, the shirts of her boys, the faded dresses of her girls. She said she had only seven children at home now, her "main oldest" boy having died a few years back, and her three oldest girls having married. She said this oldest boy had been a "pure scholar"; that although he had never "sot in a schoolhouse" a day in his life, he had in some way got hold of a speller, and taught himself his letters, and before he was through, could spell every word in the book, backwards or forwards, and knew all the reading the same way. If he had lived, it was "ontelling" what heights he would have climbed to. "Davy there, my thirteen-year-old, he has the like ambition," she said, pointing to a boy whose fine, intelligent face flushed under their gaze. "He'll larn, someway or 'nother, though I don't know how; for, though there's a big mess of young-uns on this branch, there hain't a sign of a school, nor likely to be, 'pears like." One of the younger boys lay across the foot of one of the beds, with his throat tied up. "He follers having the quinzy," said his mother. To the question, "What do you do for him?" she replied: "We make him set and rest frequent at corn-hoeing time, and I give him a little corn-liquor to kindly holp him up when hit's handy. He's a smart-turned child, too--all my young-uns is, if they could jest get a chanst." The next cabin was that of a young pair only three years married, but in this time they had done their utmost in the way of replenishing the earth, as three "least ones" attested. The home following was that of a pair of grandparents, who, having raised one large family, had now started again with eight orphan grandchildren. They and the mother of thirteen in the next cabin expressed fervent wishes that their young should have a chance at learning; and in reply to the question as to what they were doing to prevent typhoid, responded, as others had done, that a little grain of corn-liquor was the best preventive known. So far, the women had counted fifty-two children on the branch. In the next house there were eleven; and the home of the black calico baby, at the head of the branch, four miles from its mouth, remained to be visited. Arriving there, they saw the mother beside the branch, "battling" the clothes she had just washed and boiled in a big iron kettle. She would lift them out of the kettle, lay them on a smooth stump, and then beat, or "battle," them with a flat stick. Evidently washboards were an unknown luxury up Noah's Run.