the least effort to
realize on it, without lifting a finger. They have got no enterprise
in the world, and they are the most dilatory, slowest gang I ever ran
across in my life."

A dimple deepened in the soft fairness of her cheek under the white
sunbonnet.

"They got enterprise enough ter want a road," she drawled, fixing her
eyes upon him for a moment, then reverting to her former outlook.

He was a trifle embarrassed, and lost his balance.

"Oh, _I_'ll want a road, too, after a while," he returned. "All in
good time." He laughed as if to himself, a touch of mystery in his
tone, and he took off his hat and jauntily fanned himself.

"Sorter dil'tory yerse'f now; 'pears ter be a ketchin' complaint, like
the measles."

Perhaps she secretly resented the reflection on the mountaineers, for
there was a certain bellicose intention in her eye, a disposition to
push him to his last defenses.

"No; but a body would think a fellow might get enough intelligent
cooperation in any promising matter from right around here without
corresponding all over the country. And the mountaineers don't know
anything, and they don't want to learn anything. Now," convincingly,
"what would any of those fellows in there say if I should tell them
that I could take a match "--he pulled a handful of lucifers from, his
pocket--"and set a spring afire?"

She gazed at him in dumb surprise.

"They'd say I was lying, I reckon," he hazarded. With an ebullition of
laughter, he hastily scrambled to his feet and unhitched his horse;
then, as he put his foot in the stirrup, he paused and added, "Or
else, 'Better leave it be, sonny,'" with the effrontery of mimicry.
"'Mought set the mounting afire.'"

He forthwith swung himself into the saddle, and, with a jaunty wave of
the hand in adieu, fared forth homeward, leaving her staring after him
in wide-eyed amazement.

VII.

The love of contention served, in the case of old Persimmon Sneed, in
the stead of industry, of rectitude, of perseverance, of judgment, of
every quality that should adorn a man. So eager was he to be off and
at the road again that he could scarcely wait to swallow his
refection. All the charms of the profusely spread board had not
availed to decoy him from the subject, and the repast of the devoted
jury of view was seasoned with his sage advice and vehement argument
against the project, which its advocates, fully occupied, failed for
the nonce to combat. Now and again Mrs. M