ses
ran, the racing world knew they ran for blood.

Physically, he had been an athlete--a giant, and unconscious of his
strength. Incidentally, he had taken to wrestling when a boy, and as
a man his fame as a wrestler was coincident with the Tennessee
Valley. It was a manly sport which gave him great pleasure, just as
would the physical development of one of his race horses. Had he
lived in the early days of Greece, he would have won in the Olympian
wrestling match.

There was in Hillard Watts a trait which is one of the most
pronounced of his type of folks,--a sturdy, honest humor. Humor, but
of the Cromwell type--and withal, a kind that went with praying and
fighting. Possessed, naturally, of a strong mind of great good sense,
he had learned to read and write by studying the Bible--the only book
he had ever read through and through and which he seemed to know by
heart. He was earnest and honest in all things, but in his
earnestness and strong fight for right living there was the twinkle
of humor. Life, with him, was a serious fight, but ever through the
smoke of its battle there gleamed the bright sun of a kindly humor.

The overseer's home was a double log hut on the side of the mountain.
His plantation, he called it,--for having been General Travis's
overseer, he could not imagine any farm being less than a plantation.

It consisted of forty acres of flinty land on the mountain side--"too
po' to sprout cow-peas," as his old wife would always add--"but hits
pow'ful for blackberries, an' if we can just live till blackberry
time comes we can take keer ourselves."

Mrs. Watts had not a lazy bone in her body. Her religion was work:
"Hit's nature's remedy," she would add--"wuck and five draps o'
turpentine if you're feelin' po'ly."

She despised her husband's ways and thought little of his religion.
Her tongue was frightful--her temper worse. Her mission on
earth--aside from work--work--work--was to see that too much peace
and good will did not abide long in the same place.

Elder Butts, the Hard-Shell preacher, used to say: "She can go to the
full of the moon mighty nigh every month 'thout raisin' a row, if
hard pressed for time an' she thinks everybody else around her is
miser'ble. But if things look too peaceful and happy, she'll raise
sand in the last quarter or bust. The Bishop's a good man, but if he
ever gits to heaven, the bigges' diamon' in his crown'll be because
he's lived with that old 'oman an' ain't