I'll send my leetle
brother ter fetch some long-sweetenin' fer yer coffee ter night. Hyar,
Sol,"--addressing the small, limber, tow-headed, barefooted boy, a
ludicrous miniature of a man in long, loose, brown-jeans trousers
supported by a single suspender over an unbleached cotton shirt,--"run
ter the house an' fetch the sorghum-jug."

As Sol started off with the alertness of a scurrying rabbit, she
shrilly called out in a frenzy of warning: "Go the other way, Sol--up
through the pawpaws! Them cherty rocks will cut yer feet like a knife."

Sol had nerves of his own. Her sharp cry had caused him to spring
precipitately backward, frightened, but uncomprehending his danger.
Being unhurt, he was resentful. "They ain't none o' _yer_ feet, nohow,"
he grumbled, making a fresh start at less speed.

"Oh, yes, Sol," said the old grandfather, enjoying the contretemps and
the sentiment of revolt against Meddlesome's iron rule. "Everything
belongs ter Meddlesome one way or another, 'ca'se she jes makes it hern.
So take keer of _yer_ feet for _her_ sake." He turned toward her
jocosely as the small emissary disappeared among the undergrowth. "I jes
been tellin' these hunter-men, Meddy, 'bout how ye sets yerself even ter
meddle with other folkses' mournin',--what they got through with a
hunderd year' ago--tormentatin' 'bout that thar man what war starved in
the tree."

She heard him, doubtless, for a rising flush betokened her deprecation
of this ridicule in the presence of these strangers. But it was rather
that she remembered his words afterward than heeded them now. It would
seem that certain incidents, insignificant in themselves, are the pivots
on which turns the scheme of fate. She could not imagine that upon her
action in the next few seconds depended grave potentialities in more
lives than one. On the contrary, her deliberations were of a trivial
subject, even ludicrous in any other estimation than her own.

Sol was small, she argued within herself, the jug was large and sticky.
He might be tempted to lighten it, for Sol had saccharine predilections,
and the helpless jug was at his mercy. Sol had scant judgment and one
suit of clothes available; the other, sopping wet from the wash, now
swayed in the process of drying on an elder-bush in the door-yard.
Should his integrity succumb, and the jug tilt too far, the stream of
sorghum might inundate his raiment, and the catastrophe would place him
beyond the pale of polite socie