“Very well, gentlemen, I'll expect to see you there when I get back. So long.” And with his legs jogging the flanks of his mount, the farmer rode away. “We can make it, Dick,” Walton said, encouragingly. “Let's bend down to it.” “The thought of that meal is enough to keep me going,” the boy replied. “What do you reckon she will give us? But stop! My mouth is watering at such a rate that I believe I'll try not to think of it.” It was long after sundown when the wayfarers reached the farm in question. The house was a rambling, one-story, frame structure which originally had been painted, afterward whitewashed, and rain and storm beaten till not a trace of any sort of coating remained on the bare, fuzzy, gray boards. At the gate, or bars, of the snake-fence, in front, they paused, faint and exhausted, wondering if they would be bitten by watch-dogs if they entered unannounced. On the grass under the trees in the front yard a group of twenty or more young women and young men were singing plantation melodies, and here and there couples were sitting alone or strolling about, their heads close together. “They are peach-gatherers,” Walton surmised. “Come on; there are no dogs that I can see.” Crawling through the bars, they went to the house. There was no light in the front part, but a yellow glow shone from a window against the dark foliage of the trees in the rear, and thither the wanderers directed their lagging steps. Looking in at the open door of the kitchen, they saw the portly form of the farmer's wife at a table washing dishes in the light of a smoking brass lamp which had no chimney. “Oh!” she exclaimed, as her kindly eyes fell on them. “Not more pickers, surely?” “That's what we are, and as good as you ever laid eyes on,” Dick told her. “Mr. Womack said you'd give us something to eat. We haven't had a bite since yesterday.”