have sent the prospector?"
Again Everett brought Uncle Tucker back to the uninteresting topic of
what might lay under the fields, the top of which he was so interested
in cultivating.

"Oh, I reckon not," answered Uncle Tucker, puffing away as he laid
out his monkey-wrenches. "The Honorable Gid is up to his neck in this
here no-dram wave what is a-sweeping around over the state and pretty
nigh rising up as high as the necks of even private liquor bottles.
Gid's not to say a teetotaler, but he had to climb into the bandwagon
skiff or sink outen sight. He's got to tie down his seat in the state
house with a white ribbon, and he's got no mind for fooling with
phosphate dirt. He's a mighty fine man, and all of Sweetbriar thinks a
heap of him. Do you want to help me lift this wagon wheel on to this
jack, so I can sorter grease her up against the next time I use her?"

"Say, Uncle Tuck, Aunt Viney says for you to come right there now and
bring Mr. Mark and a spade and a long string with you," came just at
the critical moment of balancing the notched plank under the revolving
wagon wheel, in Stonewall Jackson's young voice, which held in it
quite a trace of Miss Lavinia's decisive tone of command. Stonie
stood in the barn door, poised for instant return along the path of
duty to the front walk, only waiting to be sure his summons would be
obeyed. Stonie was sturdy, freckled, and in possession of Uncle
Tucker's big gray eyes, Rose Mary's curled mouth and more than a tinge
of Aunt Viney's austerity of manner.

"Better come on," he further admonished. "Rose Mary can't hold that
vine up much longer, and if she lets go they'll all fall down." And as
he raced up the path Everett followed almost as rapidly, urged on by
the vision of Rose Mary drooping under some sort of unsupportable
burden. Uncle Tucker brought up the rear with the spade and a long
piece of twine.

"Oh, I thought you would never come," laughed Rose Mary from half way
up the step-ladder as she lowered herself and a great bunch of budding
honeysuckle down into Everett's upstretched arms. "I held it up as
long as I could, but I almost let it tear the whole vine down."

[Illustration: "That's what comes from letting that shoot run
catawumpas"]

"That's what comes from letting that shoot run catawumpas three years
ago. I told you about it at the time, Tucker," said Miss Lavinia with
a stern glance at Uncle Tucker, who stood with spade and twine at the
corner of