“I s’pose I’ll have to do whatever you say,” replied the poor woman in a tone of hopeless discouragement, “an’ I might as well be killed to once, as to die by inch pieces.”

“All right then,” said David cheerfully, ignoring her lethal suggestion, “but before we git down to bus’nis an’ signin’ papers, an’ in order to set myself in as fair a light ’s I can in the matter, I want to tell ye a little story.”

“I hain’t no objection ’s I know of,” acquiesced the widow graciously.

“All right,” said David, “I won’t preach more ’n about up to the sixthly—­How’d you feel if I was to light up a cigar?  I hain’t much of a hand at a yarn, an’ if I git stuck, I c’n puff a spell.  Thank ye.  Wa’al, Mis’ Cullom, you used to know somethin’ about my folks.  I was raised on Buxton Hill.  The’ was nine on us, an’ I was the youngest o’ the lot.  My father farmed a piece of about forty to fifty acres, an’ had a small shop where he done odd times small jobs of tinkerin’ fer the neighbors when the’ was anythin’ to do.  My mother was his second, an’ I was the only child of that marriage.  He married agin when I was about two year old, an’ how I ever got raised ’s more ’n I c’n tell ye.  My sister Polly was ’sponsible more ‘n any one, I guess, an’ the only one o’ the whole lot that ever gin me a decent word.  Small farmin’ ain’t cal’lated to fetch out the best traits of human nature—­an’ keep ’em out—­an’ it seems to me sometimes that when the old man wa’n’t cuffin’ my ears he was lickin’ me with a rawhide or a strap.  Fur ’s that was concerned, all his boys used to ketch it putty reg’lar till they got too big.  One on ‘em up an’ licked him one night, an’ lit out next day.  I s’pose the old man’s disposition was sp’iled by what some feller said farmin’ was, ‘workin’ all day, an’ doin’ chores all night,’ an’ larrupin’ me an’ all the rest on us was about all the enjoyment he got.  My brothers an’ sisters—­’ceptin’ of Polly—­was putty nigh as bad in respect of cuffs an’ such like; an’ my step-marm was, on the hull, the wust of all.  She hadn’t no childern o’ her own, an’ it appeared ’s if I was jest pizen to her.  ‘T wa’n’t so much slappin’ an’ cuffin’ with her as ’t was tongue.  She c’d say things that ’d jest raise a blister like pizen ivy.  I s’pose I was about as ord’nary, no-account-lookin’, red-headed, freckled little cuss as you ever see, an’ slinkin’ in my manners.  The air of our home circle wa’n’t cal’lated to raise heroes in.

“I got three four years’ schoolin’, an’ made out to read an’ write an’ cipher up to long division ’fore I got through, but after I got to be six year old, school or no school, I had to work reg’lar at anything I had strength fer, an’ more too.  Chores before school an’ after school, an’ a two-mile walk to git there.  As fur ’s clo’es was concerned, any old thing that ’d hang together was good enough fer me; but by the time the older boys had outgrowed their duds, an’ they was passed on to me, the’ wa’n’t much left