“Is it all—­very—­very bad, Mrs.—­I mean, Aunt Mary?” I asked, as I laid down my dull-toothed instrument for the dissection of the plank, and sank cross-legged on the barn floor in front of her.

“Oh, it might be worse,” she answered as she smiled again with resolution.  “Rufus has eleven nice hogs and feed enough for them until summer, thanks to the help of Adam in tending the ten-acre river-bottom field, which they made produce more than any one else in the river bend got off of fifty.  Nobody can take the house, because it is hitched on to you with entailment, and though the croppers have skimmed off all the cream of the land, the clay bottom of it is obliged to be yours.  Now that you and William have come with a little money the fields can all be restored.  Adam will help you like he did Hiram Wade down the road there.  It only cost him about ten dollars to the acre.

“But—­but father and I—­that is, Aunt Mary, you know father has lost all his property and Uncle Cradd assured us that—­that there was plenty for us all at Elmnest,” I said in a faltering tone of voice as a feeling of descending tragedy struck into my heart.

“Cradd and Rufus have lived on hog, head, heels, and tail for over a year, with nothing else but the corn meal that Rufus trades meat with Silas for.  I thought, honeybunch, when I saw you coming so stylish and beautiful with those none-such chickens that you must have been bringing a silk purse sewed with gold thread with you.  I said to Silas as he put out the lamp last night, ’The good Lord may let His deliverance horses lag along the track, but He always drives them in on the home stretch for His own, of which Moseby Craddock is one.’  ’Why, she’s so fine she can’t eat eggs outen chickens that costs less than maybe a hundred dollars the dozen,’ answered Silas to me as he put out the cat.”

“They cost eight hundred and fifty dollars and they are all I have got in the world.  Father gave up everything, and I sold my clothes and the cars to buy back his library and—­and the chickens,” I said with the terror pressing still more heavily down upon me.

“Well, I shouldn’t call them chickens spilled milk.  Just listen at ’em!” And just as we had arrived at the point of desperation in our conversation a diversion occurred in the way of two loud cacklings from the feed-room and the most ringing and triumphant crow that I am sure ever issued from the throat of a thoroughbred cock. “’Tain’t possible for ’em to have laid this quick after traveling,” said Aunt Mary, but she was almost as fleet as I was in her progress to the feed-room door.  And behold!

“Well, what do you think about that, right out of the crate just last night, no nests nor nothing!” she exclaimed as we both paused and gazed at two huge white eggs in hastily scratched nests beside the bin over which two of the very most lovely white Leghorn ladies were proudly standing and clucking, while between them Mr. G. Bird was crowing with such evident pride that I was afraid he would split his crimson throat.  All the other white Birds were clucking excitedly as if issuing hen promissory notes upon their futures.