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 growth under her care. She liked to feed her chickens and turkeys morning and evening and note how fast the little chicks and young turkeys were growing and how strong and firm were their bodies. She liked to set hens and care for the little chicks after they came out of the shell. She planted morning glories and nasturtiums about the house and trained them up on rude trellises made of tobacco sticks. The summer was full of radiant mornings a-quiver with sunshine with sweet smells and the carolling of birds, and cool, quiet evenings when she and Jerry sat together on the doorstep through the slow-falling midsummer twilight until the familiar outline of hills and trees melted into a blur of darkness and the last sleepy twitter of little birds drowsed into silence. To Judith, as to the growing plants and the wild things of the fields and woods, the sun still meant joyous life and growth, its absence, peace and sleep. She was not much more given to thinking than was the mocking bird in the hickory tree over the house; and she enjoyed her life even as he.

In September the tobacco ripened. The leaves turned from green to a rich gold and the crop was ready to harvest. Jerry refused to let Judith help with this strenuous task and hired his brother Andy instead. When the two men came in from the field after "cuttin their hands, faces and clothes were smeared thickly with the sticky tobacco sap and its rank odor filled the kitchen.

After the tobacco had been allowed to wilt in the field, they hauled it to Hiram Stone's nearest tobacco barn, a big structure built on the top of the ridge about half a mile from Jerry's field.

It was a great relief to Jerry when the last load was hauled in and hung up. So many things can happen to spoil a tobacco crop that he had lived in constant anxiety ever since the plants had been set in the ground. The weather had favored Scott County that year, and the tobacco was heavy and of fine quality.

"Naow, by gollies, if she don't up an' heat in the barn the crop's made," he said to himself.