our way over the hill I told him about Tolly and Edith. Sam laughed; he
always does when I want him to; but his eyes were grave after a second.

"The mating season is a troublesome time, isn't it, Betty?" he asked, as
he swung me to the top rail of the fence, vaulted over it, and held up
his arms to lift me down on the other side; but I sat poised in midair
to argue his proposition.

"It ought not to be, Sam," I said, with an experienced feeling rising in
my mind and voice at thus discussing fundamentals with a man that could
break a wheat record and be attended by the agricultural envoys of the
United States government. "People ought to sensibly pick each other from
their needs, and not act unintelligent about it."

At which perfectly sage remark a strange thing happened to Samuel Foster
Crittenden. He laid his head down on the rail beside my knee and laughed
until he almost shook me from my perch. It made me so furious that I
slipped past him and ran on ahead. I vaulted the next fence in fine
style and landed among the Commissioner and Dr. Chubb and the
tobacco-juice neighbors, who had come to see the output of the first
book-grown acre. I did not speak again to Sam that day until he tucked
in Dr. Chubb beside me for a spin over to Spring Hill, leaving the
doctor's old roan for a week's complimentary grazing on Sam's east
meadow of thick blue-grass, grown through a rock-lime dressing that all
the neighbors had assured him would kill the land outright.

"Wheez-chekk! nice young buck for a husband," wheezed the Butterball as
I shot down the hill from under Sam's big hand reached out for my hair.

"Sam?" I gasped.

"Women critters always back and shy, but they git the wedding-bit from a
steady hand--and like it," he chuckled, still further. I felt as if I
ought not to let Sam rest under such a suspicion, and that I ought to
tell him about Peter. But just then he launched forth on a case of a
spavined horse he had beyond the cross-roads, which he wanted me to take
him to see, and I didn't do it.

I don't much like to think about the long, hot July weeks that followed.
The whole of Harpeth Valley sweltered, and everybody did likewise. That
is, I suppose Peter did, for not one glimpse did I or anybody else get
of him. Sam says Mammy set his meals down in the doorway of the shack
with one of her soft, soothing, "Dah, dah, chile," which was answered
with a growl from Peter. That ended the events of his life at The
Bri