“The time for saying has passed, and I’m afraid to look forwards to what we may have to do,” answered Uncle Tucker quietly.  “After Gid was gone on up the road I walked over to Tilting Rock and sat down with my pipe to think it all over.  My eyes are a-getting kinder dim now, but as far as I could see in most all directions was land that I had always called mine since I come into a man’s estate.  And there is none of it that has ever had a deed writ aginst it since that first Alloway got it in a grant from Virginy.  There is meadow land and corn hillside, creeks for stock and woodlands for shelter, and the Alloways before me have fenced it solid and tended it honest, with return enrichment for every crop.  And now it has come to me in my old age to let it go into the hands of strangers—­sold by my own flesh and blood for a mess of pottage, he not knowing what he did I will believe, God help me.  I’m resting him and the judgment of him in the arms of Mercy, but my living folks have got to have an earthly shelter.  Can you see a way, child?  As I say, my eyes are a-getting dim.”

“I can’t see any other shelter than the Briars, Uncle Tucker, and there isn’t going to be any other,” answered Rose Mary as she stroked the old hat in her hand.  “You know sometimes men run right against a stone wall when a woman can see a door plainly in front of them both.  She just looks for the door and don’t ask to know who is going to open it from the other side.  Our door is there I know—­I have been looking for it for a long time.  Right now it looks like a cow gate to me,” and a little reluctant smile came over Rose Mary’s grave face as if she were being forced to give up a cherished secret before she were ready for the revelation.

“And if the gate sticks, Rose Mary, I believe you’ll climb the fence and pull us all over, whether or no,” answered Uncle Tucker with a slightly comforted expression coming into his eyes.  “You’re one of the women who knot a bridle out of a horse’s own tail to drive him with.  Have you got this scheme already geared up tight, ready to start?”

“It’s only that Mr. Crabtree brought word from town that the big grocery he sells my butter to would agree to take any amount I could send them at a still larger price.  If we could hold on to the place, buy more cows and all the milk other people in Sweetbriar have to sell I believe I could make the interest and more than the interest every year.  But if Mr. Newsome needs the money, I am afraid—­he might not like to wait.  It would be a year before I could see exactly how things succeed—­and that’s a long time.”

“Yes, and it would mean for you to just be a-turning yourself into meat and drink for the family, nothing more or less, Rose Mary.  You work like you was a single filly hitched to a two-horse wagon now, and that would be just piling fence rails on top of the load of hay you are already a-drawing for all of us old live stock.  You couldn’t work all that butter.”