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“Get in, Buck.”

Silently he got in and I pushed off–to the centre.

“This the deepest part, Buck?”

“I reckon so.”

I dropped in the stone and the line reeled out some fifty feet and began to coil on the surface of the water.

“I guess that’s on the bottom, isn’t it, Buck?”

Buck looked genuinely distressed; but presently he brightened.

“Yes,” he said, “ef hit ain’t on a turtle’s back.”

Literally I threw up both hands and back we trailed–fishless.

“Reckon you won’t need that two-hoss wagon,” said Buck. “No, Buck, I think not.” Buck looked at the Blight and gave himself the pleasure of his first chuckle. A big crackling, cheerful fire awaited us. Through the door I could see, outstretched on a bed in the next room, the limp figure of “pap” in alcoholic sleep. The old mother, big, kind-faced, explained–and there was a heaven of kindness and charity in her drawling voice.

“Dad didn’ often git that a-way,” she said; “but he’d been out a-huntin’ hawgs that mornin’ and had met up with some teamsters and gone to a political speakin’ and had tuk a dram or two of their mean whiskey, and not havin’ nothin’ on his stummick, hit had all gone to his head. No, ‘pap’ didn’t git that a-way often, and he’d be all right jes’ as soon as he slept it off a while.” The old woman moved about with a cane and the sympathetic Blight merely looked a question at her.

“Yes, she’d fell down a year ago–and had sort o’ hurt herself–didn’t do nothin’, though, ‘cept break one hip,” she added, in her kind, patient old voice. Did many people stop there? Oh, yes, sometimes fifteen at a time–they “never turned nobody away.” And she had a big family, little Cindy and the two big girls and Buck and Mart–who was out somewhere–and the hired man, and yes–“Thar was another boy, but he was fitified,” said one of the big sisters.

“I beg your pardon,” said the wondering Blight, but she knew that phrase wouldn’t do, so she added politely:

“What did you say?”

“Fitified–Tom has fits. He’s in a asylum in the settlements.”

“Tom come back once an’ he was all right,” said the old mother; “but he worried so much over them gals workin’ so hard that it plum’ throwed him off ag’in, and we had to send him back.”

“Do you work pretty hard?” I asked presently. Then a story came that was full of unconscious pathos, because there was no hint of complaint–simply a plain statement of daily life. They got up before the men, in order to get breakfast ready; then they went with the men into the fields–those two girls–and worked like men. At dark they got supper ready, and after the men went to bed they worked on–washing dishes and clearing up the kitchen. They took it turn about getting supper, and sometimes, one said, she was “so plumb tuckered out that she’d drap on the bed and go to sleep ruther than eat her own supper.” No wonder poor Tom had to go back to the asylum. All the while the two girls stood by the fire looking, politely but minutely, at the two strange girls and their curious clothes and their boots, and the way they dressed their hair. Their hard life seemed to have hurt them none–for both were the pictures of health–whatever that phrase means.

After supper “pap” came in, perfectly sober, with a big ruddy face, giant frame, and twinkling gray eyes. He was the man who had risen to speak his faith in the Hon. Samuel Budd that day on the size of the Hon. Samuel’s ears. He, too, was unashamed and, as he explained his plight again, he did it with little apology.

“I seed ye at the speakin’ to-day. That man Budd is a good man. He done somethin’ fer a boy o’ mine over at the Gap.” Like little Buck, he, too, stopped short. “He’s a good man an’ I’m a-goin’ to help him.”