when you say--bang!--off she
goes."

There was a moment of delightful expectancy, and then--

"Bang!" cried the child, and on the instant the rifle cracked. "Do it
again! Please, Uncle Bob!" he cried, wild with delight.

"Now if you was to help yo' Uncle Bob hook up that old mule of hisn and
ride home with him, fo' he's going pretty shortly, you and Uncle Bob
could do right much shootin' with this old rifle." Mr. Crenshaw had
appeared with a bundle, which he tossed into the cart. Yancy turned to
him. "If you meet any inquiring friends, Mr. John, I reckon you may say
that my nevvy's gone fo' to pay me a visit. Most of his time will be
agreeably spent shootin' with this rifle at a mark, and me holdin' him
so he won't get kicked clean off his feet."

Thereafter beguiling speech flowed steadily from Mr. Yancy's bearded
lips, in the midst of which relations were established between the mule
and cart, and the boy quitted the Barony for a new world.

"Do you reckon if Uncle Bob was to let you, you could drive, sonny?"

"Can she gallop?" asked the boy.

Mr. Yancy gave him a hurt glance.

"She's too much of a lady to do that," he said. "No, I 'low this ain't
'so fast as running or walking, but it's a heap quicker than standing
stock-still." The afternoon sun waned as they went deeper and deeper
into the pine woods, but at last they came to their journey's end, a
widely scattered settlement on a hill above a branch.

"This," said Mr. Yancy, "are Scratch Hill, sonny. Why Scratch Hill? Some
say it's the fleas; others agin hold it's the eternal bother of making a
living here, but whether fleas or living you scratch fo' both."

CHAPTER II. YANCY TELLS A MORAL TALE

In the deep peace that rested like a benediction on the pine-clad slopes
of Scratch Hill the boy Hannibal followed at Yancy's heels as that
gentleman pursued the not arduous rounds of temperate industry which
made up his daily life, for if Yancy were not completely idle he was
responsible for a counterfeit presentment of idleness having most of the
merits of the real article. He toiled casually in a small cornfield and
a yet smaller truck patch, but his work always began late, when it began
at all, and he was easily dissuaded from continuing it; indeed, his
attitude toward it seemed to challenge interference.

In the winter, when the weather conditions were perfectly adjusted to
meet certain occult exactions he had come to require, Yancy could be
indu