"You've heard the rumor that the negroes are drilling at night."
"Yes, what of it?"
"It's a fact, that's what there is of it. Just now I rode quite a ways with Mayo and he was inclined to be pretty sassy; and right back there I looked into Gabe Little's cabin and saw him with a gun across his lap."
"Well, what of that? Haven't the negroes had guns ever since the war, and hasn't a man got the right to sit with his gun across his lap? Uncle Gideon, I'm afraid you've been putting too much new wine into an old bottle."
"Soft, Jimmie; it was old liquor, sixty years at least. But I gad, it strikes me that you are pretty glib to-night. You must have heard something."
"No, not since Mrs. Cranceford got the letter, but that was enough to last me a good while."
"Didn't hear about my bereavement, did you?"
"What, you bereaved, Uncle Gideon? How did it happen?"
"At the imperious beck and call of nature, Jimmie. My uncle died and inflicted on me money enough to make a pretense of paying my debts, and I've made such a stagger that even Mrs. Cranceford has admitted me into the out-lying districts of her good opinion. But that's got nothing to do with the business in hand. Let's go back yonder and find out why that negro sits there suckling his gun to sleep."
"But if he suckles it to sleep there's no harm in it, Uncle Gideon."