co't and sech-like maybe you'll want to shet
the do' sometimes--and then whar'll ye git breath to breathe?"

"I reckon Creed knows his business," put in the old man who was helping
Doss, "but all these here glass winders is blame foolishness to _me_. Ef
ye need light, open the do'. Ef somebody comes that you don't want in,
you can shet it and put up a bar. But saw the walls full o' holes an' set
in glass winders, an' any feller that's got a mind to can pick ye off
with a rifle ball as easy as not whilst ye set by the fire of a
evenin'."

He shook a reprehending head, hoary with the snows of years, and
containing therefore, presumably, wisdom. He had learned the necessary
points of life in his environment, and as always occurs, the younger
generation seemed to him lavishly reckless.

It was only old Jephthah's criticisms that Creed really minded.

"Uh-huh," allowed Jephthah, settling his hands on his hips and surveying
the yellow pine structure tolerantly; "mighty sightly for them that likes
that kind o' thing. But I hold with a good log house, becaze it's apt to
be square. These here town doin's that looks like a man with a bile on
his ear never did ketch me. Ef ye hew out good oak or pine timber ye
won't be willin' to cut short lengths for to make such foolishness."

Creed would often have explained to his critics that he did not expect to
get into feuds and have neighbours pot-hunting him through his glass
windows, that he needed the light from them to study or read, and that
his little house was as square as any log hut ever constructed; but they
lumped it all together and made an outsider of him--which hurt.

Word went abroad to the farthest confines of the Turkey Track
neighbourhoods, carried by herders who took sheep, hogs, or cows up into
the high-hung inner valleys of Yellow Old Bald, or the natural meadows of
Big Turkey Track to turn them loose for the season, recited where one or
two met out salting cattle, discussed by many a chip pile, where the
willing axe rested on the unsplit block while the wielder heard how Creed
Bonbright had done sot up a jestice's office and made peace between the
Shallidays and the Bushareses.

"But you know in reason hit ain't a-goin' to hold," the old women at the
hearthside would say, withdrawing their cob pipes to shake deprecating
heads. "The Bushareses and Shallidays has been killin' each other up
sence my gran'pap was a little boy. They tell me the Injuns mixed into
t