one is wanted in your neighborhood."

He looked at me from head to foot, and replied: "I shouldn't wonder but
you are the right man. What's your name?"

I told him and after a few moments of silence he asked, "Any kin to the
Luke Hawes that fought in the Creek war?"

"He was my grandfather."

"Ah, hah, and my daddy fit with him--was a lieutenant in his company.
Let's shake hands. Whoa, boys." He stopped his horses, got up, shook
down the wrinkled legs of his trousers and reached forth his hand.

"You are a stranger in North Caroliny," he said when he had clucked to
his horses.

"Yes, I am a stranger everywhere you might put it," I answered. "I am
from Alabama, but the people made so much fun of me in the community
where I was brought up that I am even a stranger there."

"What did they make fun of you about?"

"Because I was overgrown and awkward."

"Whoa, boys! Let's shake hands again. I got it the same way when I was a
boy, and I come in one of never gettin' over it."

We drove on and had gone some distance when he asked: "Do you know all
about 'rithmetic?"

"I at least know the multiplication table."

"It's more than I do. Get up there, boys. And down in my country they
think that a man that don't know all about 'rithmetic is a fool. I have
often told them that there wan't no record of the fact that the Saviour
was good at figgers, except figgers of speech, but they won't have it
that a man is smart unless he can go up to a barn and cover one side of
it with eights and sevens and nines and all that sort of thing. I've got
a daughter that's quicker than a flash--took it from her mother, I
reckon--and I have a son that's tolerable, but I have always been left
in the lurch right there. But I can read all right, and I know the Book
about as well as the most of them, but that makes no difference down in
our neighborhood. The pace down there is set by Old General Lundsford.
He knows all about figgers and everything else, for that matter, but
figgers is his strong holt. He owns nearly everything; is a mighty
'ristocrat and don't bend very often; lives in the house that his
grandfather built, great big brick, and never had no respect for me at
all until I wallowed him in the road one day about thirty odd years ago.
And along about ten years after that he found out that he had a good
deal of respect for me. What do you know about game chickens?"

"Not very much; I simply know that they are about the bravest thi