And while the three children playing before the door were barefooted and had soiled faces, still, as Thad expressed it, this was “clean dirt,” by which he meant that they undoubtedly must have accumulated it inside of an hour or two, for there was abundant evidence that water was freely used at this place.

Eagerly the boys waited to see what the daughter of old The.  Badgeley looked like.  No woman could stand such a life of care and want without showing the lines on her face; but when she came to the door to see what all the racket meant, Thad just threw up his hat and let out a genuine whoop, he was so glad.

Even in her cheap calico dress the woman showed her caliber.  Dirt and Mrs. Stormway evidently were at daggers’ points, and could not live peaceably together under the same roof.  It was a relief just to look at her face, after what they had recently seen.

And when she talked, while there was the Southern accent to some extent, they missed that twang and peculiar type of expression so common among the poor whites.

“This is Mrs. Stormway, I reckon?” said Maurice, as he came up.

“Yes, that is my name, sir,” she replied, while her face lighted up with some sort of expectancy.

“My name is Thad Tucker, and I’m from Kentucky, ma’am!”

“Oh!  Thad Tucker!  Then you are the boy father used to write about?  What on earth brings you away down here?  Have you come to see me?”

She was holding his hand now, plainly excited.

A man had followed her to the door.  He was white and thin, but had a face that Maurice liked at first sight.  If this was George, as he believed, then it was worth while that they go to all this trouble to bring him good news.

“This is my friend, Maurice Pemberton.  He’s from old Kentucky, too.  You see,” said Thad, hardly able to phrase a connected story in his excitement, “the folks he was livin’ with broke up, and he was left with nary a home.  Now, I’d been keepin’ house on the shanty-boat old The.—­I mean your father, give me when he was carried off to the hospital.  Maurice he got a letter from his Uncle Ambrose, telling him to be in New Orleans in February, and he’d give him a berth on the big tramp steamer he’s captain of.  So Maurice and me we made up our minds to drift down South on our shanty-boat.”

“And on your way you determined to stop over and see me.  How good of you, Thad Tucker.  Oh, I am so glad to see you!  Now I can hear about my poor father’s passing.  All I know was contained in a short letter from the authorities of the hospital, saying he had been taken there and died.  There was money enough found on his person to pay for burying him, but that was all.  Come here, George, I want you to meet my father’s young friend, Thad Tucker.  You remember reading about him.”

The thin man advanced with rather tottering steps, but a pleasant smile on his face.  Maurice wondered whether what Kim.  Stallings had said would prove true; and if this man, racked by malaria, could regain his health if he changed his home to higher ground.