"Why don't you go hunting, and try to kill you a turkey for
Thanksgiving?" ventured Walter, slipping his arm insinuatingly through
his grandfather's. "I saw a great big flock of wild ones down on the
branch last week, and I got right close up to them before they flew."

"I reckon there ought to be a smart sight of game round and about them
cane brakes along that branch," said the old man slowly, as though
thinking aloud. "It used to be ahead of any strip of woods in all
these parts, when me and Dick was boys. But nobody ain't hunted there,
to my knowledge, not sence me and him fell out."

"I wish you and Grandpa Dun were friends," sighed Walter. "It does
seem too bad to have two grandpas living right side by side, and not
speaking."

"I ain't got no ill-will in my heart for Dick," replied Grandpa Davis,
"but he is too everlastin' hard-headed to knock under, and I'll be
blamed if I go more'n halfway toward makin' up."

"That's just exactly what Grandpa Dun says about you," Walter assured
him very earnestly.

"Wouldn't wonder if he did," said the old man pointedly. "Dick is
always ben a mighty hand to talk, and he'd drap dead in his tracks if
he couldn't get in the last word."

Be this as it might, the breach had begun when the Davis cattle broke
down the worn fence and demolished the Dun crop of corn, and it
widened when the Dun hogs found their way through an old water gap and
rooted up a field of the Davis sweet potatoes. Several times similar
depredations were repeated, and then shotguns were used on both sides
with telling effect. The climax was reached when John Dun eloped with
Rebecca, the only child of the Davises.

The young couple were forbidden their respective homes, though the
farm they rented was scarce half a mile away, and the weeks rolled
into months without sign of their parents relenting.

When Walter was born, however, the two grandmothers stole over,
without their husbands' knowledge, and mingled their tears in happy
communion over the tiny blue-eyed mite.

It was a memorable day at each of the houses when the sturdy little
fellow made his way, unbidden and unattended, to pay his first call,
and ever afterward (though they would not admit it, even to
themselves) the grandfathers watched for his coming, and vied with
each other in trying to win the highest place in his young affections.

He had inherited characteristics of each of his grandsires, and
possessed the bold, masterful manner