"Well," Grandpap Singleton said hopefully, "mebbe it'll all come out right in the end. Le's me and you both go to Old Buck and talk to him; heh? Both o' us together, Jane. It may not do no good; but ontel we've done it we hain't done all we could do, Jane. What do ye say; heh?"
"All right," Granny Wolfe nodded. "He's out the mountain thar a-makin' a run on his moonshine 'still. He'll be mad when he sees us together, mebbe; but ef you don't keer, I shorely don't. Bill Singleton, hain't it a dad-burned shame fo' a man as good as him to be as lowdown mean as he is?"
"Yes, Jane, yes. Ha' ye got a weensy teensy bit o' pipe tobacker about ye, Jane? I fo'got to bring mine along, and I'm jest a-sufferin' fo' a smoke."
"I ain't never without it, Bill, shorely," the old woman told him. "I plants my tobacker afore I plants my bread cawn. We hain't got no fire to light our pipes with, though."
"Good excuse fo' a-goin' out to Buck's still," said Grandpap Singleton. He fished a blackened clay pipe from a trousers pocket. "The tobacker, Jane."
She took a dry twist of homegrown tobacco from a pocket in her faded calico dress, and passed it to him. He courteously filled her pipe first. Then they went limping out the side of the Big Blackfern, these two, over ground carpeted softly with leaves of brilliant saffron, pale yellow, mottled scarlet, deep red, and several shades of brown. Neither spoke, for each was saddened by a keen realization that it was autumn for them in more ways than one.
After fifteen minutes of traveling thus, they entered a narrow and deep, dark gash filled with hemlocks and laurel, through which flowed a very small, clear stream of water.
"Why, the still it hain't far from the fambly buryin'-ground, is it, Jane?" observed Grandpap Singleton as they stepped into a path that wound its way dimly through the undergrowth.
"Which is jest as it should be, Bill, honey," returned Granny Wolfe, her voice heavy with meaning.
"Heh! Yes, Jane," her companion agreed.