Mrs. Chunn’s beady eyes fastened on him. Instantly she recognized a defeat that was sweeter than victory, but she was not yet prepared to admit it. “Oh, she gits you-all, does she? Well, I ’low she don’t git much ’f yo’ don’t make a better husban’ than yo’ do a son.” She turned on her heel and went into the house without more words. Another woman stood first with her boy now. Her jealousy was bitter. But it was for the moment only, and beneath it was to grow a deep satisfaction that Jed had at last come to anchorage near her. Mellie followed her timidly into the house. She found her stepmother stringing peppers with an impassive face. Kneeling down beside the older woman, she slipped an arm round her. “I jes’ cu’dn’t help loving Jed, Maw. I reckon I always have, but I didn’t know hit till I seen him so sudden-like in the hickory lead. We’uns are goin’ to be good child’en to you-all and obedient.” Mrs. Chunn gave a parched little laugh. “Yes, hit looks like it.” An impressionist’s sketch of a smile touched Mellie’s lips. “I done like yo’ said. I got a man, Maw.” [Illustration] [Illustration: With Bob Taylor] SENTIMENT AND STORY In an article accredited to my pen, in the December number of this magazine, the types had me telling a curious tale of the singing of a whippoorwill, on a certain joyous night in the blessed Christmas of the sweet long ago, and the question is raised by certain ornithological experts whether that doleful bird does its warblings in the winter. It is best to copy what the _Washington Herald_ says under the heading: “SWEET BELLS OUT OF TUNE.” Senator-elect Robert Love Taylor in one of his famous lectures describes Christmas in the mountains of his native state, and says: “When I was a young man in my teens and twenties, the Christmas season was the brightest of the year. I used to take my fiddle under my arm at evening, when the whippoorwill began to sing and the stars began to twinkle, and hie me away to the merrymakings in the mountains.” To this statement the _Nashville American_ takes exception, and declares that no one ever heard a whippoorwill singing in the mountains of Tennessee during the latter part of December. The _American_ hints that Mr. Taylor has tuned his instrument to an unheard-of pitch, and that the music he makes is discordant and badly out of gear.