"Well, I wisht I may never! My sakes, Grandpap Bill Singleton, you skeered me mighty durned nigh it to death! Now what'n Tophet do ye mean, anyhow, a-slippin' up on folks that a-way?" She tried to appear very angry, and failed altogether.
"Huh-huh!" laughed Grandpap Singleton, tugging at his long white beard. "How's yore old bones this mornin', Jane Wolfe?"
Granny Wolfe smiled the smile she had been holding in with difficulty for half a minute.
"Bill Singleton," she said, bending toward him, "ef it wasn't fo' the dad-burned old rheumatiz', I'd feel like a yearlin' colt! I've been a-totin' a buckeye-nut in my pocket, but it never done me a hoot's wo'th o' good. 'Bout the onliest thing 'at ever helped me any was good luck, lampile, and tarpentine. Ever try it, Bill, honey?"
Some thirty feet back in the laurel, a huge and gaunt man whose black hair and beard were not without threads of silver, knelt before a ginseng plant. He had been listening, and he had heard every word of the little conversation that had just passed between his mother and the father of his bitterest enemy. Once he had whispered to himself, "Well, I'll be danged!"
"I've tried everything, Jane," nodded Grandpap Singleton. "Well, I'm a-goin' down to the upper end o' Little Buck's railroad to see Little Buck, Jane. My pore son Alex his trial was to take place over in town yeste'day, and Little Buck he'll shore know about it, o' course. I shorely am a-hopin' they've done went and turned Alex loose; and yit—and yit, Jane, he ain't never come back home!"
"And when is Cat-Eye Mayfield to have his trial?" Granny Wolfe wanted to know.
"Done had it," the Prophet answered. "He got a-lackin' one day of a year in jail, at hard labor. May I ax whar you'd started to, Jane Wolfe?"
"Me? Oh, I'd jest started down to gass wi Little Buck fo' awhile, Bill. My shoe it got ontied, and I was a-tryin' to fix it up when here comes you to skeer me mighty nigh to death. I've allus heerd, Bill Singleton, 'at when anybody's shoe it got untied it was a shore sign 'at somebody was a-thinkin' about 'em. Hain't you?"