"I got something of an idea of it when Uncle Peter took me around summer before last, and I learned a lot more getting the stuff together with Coplen. Now, I'm ready to buckle down to it." He looked at Uncle Peter, hungry for a word of encouragement to soothe the hurts the old man had put upon him. But all Uncle Peter would say was, "That _sounds_ very well," compelling the inference that he regarded sound and substance as phenomena not necessarily related. "But give me a chance, Uncle Peter. Just don't jump on me too hard for a year!" "Well, I know that country. There's big chances for a young man with brains--understand?--that has got all the high-living nonsense blasted out of his upper levels--but it takes work. You _may_ do something--there _are_ white blackbirds--but you're on a nasty piece of road-bed--curves all down on the outside--wheels flatted under every truck, and you've had her down in the corner so long I doubt if you can even slow up, say nothin' of reversin'. And think of me gettin' fooled that way at _my_ time of life," he continued, as if in confidence to himself. "But then, I always was a terrible poor judge of human nature." "Well, have your own way; but I'll fool you again, while you're coppering me. You watch, that's all I ask. Just sit around and talk wise about me all you want to, but watch. Now, I must go down and get to work with Fouts. Thank the Lord, we didn't have to welsh either, any more than Mrs. Give-up there did." "You won't touch any more stock; you won't get that money from Shepler?" "I won't; I won't go near Shepler, I promise you. Now you'll believe me in one thing, I know you will, Uncle Peter." He went over to the old man. "I want to thank you for pulling me up on that play as you did last night. You saved me, and I'm more grateful to you than I can say. But for you I'd have gone in and dug the hole deeper." He made the old man shake hands with him--though Uncle Peter's hand remained limp and cheerless. "You can shake on that, at least. You saved me, and I thank you for it."