ie B. grabbed the clay-root and stuffed his wool hat into his
mouth just in time.

"It was worth a dollar," he told Ozzie B. that night, after they had
retired to their trundle bed. "The pony squatted fust mighty nigh to
the groun'--then he riz a-buckin'. I seed Jud's coat-tail a-turnin'
summersets through the air, the saddle and blanket a-followin'. I
heard him when he hit the swamp hole on the side of the road
_kersplash!_--an' the pony skeered speechless went off tearin'
to-ards home. Then I hollered out: '_Go it ole, fly-ketcher--you're
as good for tad-poles as you is for bird-eggs_'--an' I lit out
through the wood."

Ozzie B. burst out crying: "Oh, Archie B., do you reckin the po' man
got hurt?"

Archie B. replied by kicking him in the ribs until he ceased crying.

"Say yo' prayers now and go to sleep. I'll kick you m'se'f, but I'll
lick anybody else that does it."

As Ozzie B. dozed off he heard:

"_Venture pee-wee under the bridge--bam--bam--bam._ Oh, Lord, you who
made the tar'nal fools of this world, have mussy on 'em!"

CHAPTER VI

THE FLINT AND THE COAL

Love is love and there is nothing in all the world like it. Its
romance comes but once, and it is the perfume that precedes the
ripened fruit of all after life. It is not amenable to any of the
laws of reason; nor subject to any law of logic; nor can it be
explained by the analogy of anything in heaven or earth. Do not,
therefore, try to reason about it. Only love once--and in youth--and
be forever silent.

One of the mysteries of love to older ones is that two young people
may become engaged and never a word be spoken. Put the girl in a
convent, even, and let the boy but walk past, and the thing is done.
They look and love, and the understanding is complete. They see and
sigh, and read each other's secret thoughts, past and present--each
other's hopes, fears.

They sigh and are engaged, and there is perfect understanding.

Time and Romance travel not together. Time must hurry on. Romance
would loiter by the way. And so Romance, in her completeness, loves
to dwell most where Time, traveling over the mile-tracks of the
tropics, which belong by heredity to Alabama--stalks slower than on
those strenuous half-mile tracks that spin around the earth in
latitudes which grow smaller as they approach the frozen pole.

The sun had reached, in his day's journey, the bald knob of Sunset
Peak, and there, behind it, seemed to stop. At least to Hel