“I mind Jim when he first kem to us,” she said, more to herself than to Eudora, who sat at her feet.  The impending tragedy in the family had robbed her of all the joy in her suitors.  They sat on a bench on the opposite side of the house, divided by the very nature of their interests yet companions in misery.

“He wuz scarce four, an’ yet he had never been broke of the habit of sucking his thumb.  Ef he’d ben my child, I’d a lammed it out’n him before he’d a seen two, but seem’ he was aged for an infant havin’ such practices, I tried to shame him out’n it.  But, Lord a massy, men folks is hard to shame even at four.  I hissed at him like a gyander every time I seen him do it.  Now I’d a knowed better—­I’d a sewed it up in a pepper rag.”

“What’s suckin’ his thumb as an infant got to do with his gettin’ lynched now?” demanded Eudora, with the scepticism of the second generation.

“Wait till you-uns has children of your own,” sniffed her mother, from the assured position of maternal experience, “an’ see the infant that’s allowed to suck its thumb has the makin’s in him of a felon or a unfortunit.”  She rocked a slow accompaniment to her dismal, prophecy.

Eudora’s eyes, big with wonder, were fixed on the crouching flank of a distant mountain.  Her mother broke the silence.  Not often did they speak thus intimately.  Old Sally belonged to that class of mothers who feel a pride in their reticent dealings with their daughters, and who consider the management of all affairs of the heart peculiarly the province of youth and inexperience.

But to-night she was prompted by a force beyond her ken to speak to the girl.  “Eudory, in pickin’ out one of them men,” she jerked her thumb towards the opposite side of the house, “git one tha’s clar o’ the trick o’ stampedin’ round other wimming.  It’s bound to kem back to ye, same as counterfeit money.”

Eudora giggled.  She was of an age when the fascinations of curiosity as to the unknown male animal prompt lavish conjecture.  “I ’lowed they all stampeded.”

“Yes,” leered the old woman—­and she grinned the whole horrid length of her empty gums—­“the most of ’em does.  But you must shet your eyes to it.  The moment they know you swallow it, they’s wuthless, like horses that has run away once.”

“Hark!” said Eudora.  “Ain’t that wheels?”

“It be,” answered her mother.  “It be that old Ma’am Yellett after her gov’ment.”

IX

Mrs. Yellett And Her “Gov’ment”

The buckboard drew up to the back or open-faced entrance of the Rodney house with a splendid sweep, terminating in a brilliantly staccato halt, as if to convey to the residents the flattering implication that their house was reached via a gravelled driveway, rather than across lumpish inequalities of prairie overgrown with cactus stumps and clumps of sage-brush.  From the buckboard stepped a figure whose agility was compatible with her driving.