“Glad yuh stopped in hyah, Maurice; glad tuh have met up with yuh; and if so be yuh are short with cash, I wouldn’t mind trustin’ yuh foh some grits and such like.  I reckons sho’ yuh’d send the money aftah yuh met with this uncle.  So don’t yuh go tuh worryin’ ’bout gettin’ on short rations, my boy,” remarked Kim.  Stallings, after he had talked with the other for some little time.

“That’s awful fine of you to say so, Mr. Stalling.  Perhaps we’ll take you up, though my chum is against running in debt a cent.  But we have a long trip ahead of us yet, and to stop over and go to work to earn money enough to buy grub might keep us from getting down to Orleans in time to meet Uncle Ambrose.”

Maurice insisted upon shaking the lean hand of the Dixie storekeeper as he said this, an operation to which the other did not seem in the least averse.

“But yuh said that yuh wanted to meet up with George Stromway the wust kind,” continued the man, kindly; “in the mawnin’ I’ll start yuh right.  P’raps one o’ his kids might be ’round tuh take yuh through the woods, and ’round the swamps, foh it’s ticklish travelin’ with a stranger, sah.”

“We have some good news for George,” admitted the boy.

“Well, now, I’m glad tuh hyah that same.  I reckon he needs it right bad around now.  Nawthin’ ain’t a gwine tuh do pore George any lastin’ good till he pulls up stakes an’ gits outen this low kentry.  If he was only on a farm up on higher land I reckon the shakes’d give the critter the go-by.  But George, he cain’t never raise the money he’d have tuh put up, tuh rent a farm an’ buy the stock foh it.”

“Would it take very much?” queried Maurice, trying to appear quite unconcerned, though he was really quivering with eagerness.

The storekeeper looked at him and smiled, as though he could read the boy’s face like a printed book.

“Oh! not so very much, sah.  I done reckons as how a couple o’ hundred’d do the trick; but that means a heap o’ money tuh a pore feller like George.  He done tole me a year back that some relative o’ hisn up-Nawth was a thinkin’ o’ comin’ down with some cash, an’ settin’ o’ him up on a farm; but it all seemed to blow over.  He was nigh broke up about it, too, sah, I tell yuh.”

Maurice could not hold in altogether.

“It was his wife’s father, old The.  Badgeley.  My chum knew him well.  He didn’t come because he died.  But he left something for his daughter.  He called her Bunny, and I don’t even know her name,” he said.

“That sounds real good, sah; and I sure am glad tuh heah it.  I’ve done all I could afford foh George; but he don’t seem to hold out.  Many times he’s kim back to work foh me, an’ broke down.  It’ll be a godsend foh the pore feller, if so be he kin pull out.  I’ll see that you git a fair start in the mawnin’ sah, I shore will.”

Maurice began to fear that his chum might be growing anxious about him, so he got up to leave.