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 room. I'm a bit short o' hay this year an' I thought I'd come daown an' see if I couldn't make some sort of a deal with him."

By this time they had reached the kitchen door. Uncle Sam stepped inside and found Ezra, as Judith had predicted, sitting with his feet on the oven fender, his suspenders down, his long gray face set and motionless. He turned his head as Uncle Sam darkened the sunny doorway.

"Waal, Sam."

"Waal, Ezry. Purty weather we're a-havin'. I hain't seed a purtier September since '83, the fall afore the coldest winter we ever had to my knowin'. An' this summer's crops is the best there's been this nine year. Corn's made an' terbaccer's made; but we'll be needin' a good rain soon to freshen up the pastures."

Uncle Ezra did not hear a word of any of this, so he grunted for answer in a non-committal manner. His feet being now roasted to a turn, he fished out his congress shoes from under the stove and drew them on slowly and methodically. Then he got up, hitched his suspenders over his stooping shoulders, took down his hat from its peg by the side of the door, and stepped out into the sunshine followed by his visitor.

The two old men passed out of the garden gate and walked across the barnyard side by side.

"I hearn you had a part spiled stack of alfalfy hay you was a-wishin' to git shet of, Ezry."

Uncle Sam said this not in his former conversational tone, but in a loud shout close to Ezra's ear; for it was intended to be heard.

"Part spiled nuthin! There hain't a leaf of it spiled. It's all good, clean alfalfy. On'y reason I want to sell it, I got plenty hay this year, an' I'm a-goin' to be needin' the room in the terbaccer barn."

"I hearn it was part spiled," shouted back Uncle Sam with brazen conviction. "Anyway, let's have a look at it, Ezry."

The two men, the one with bent back and plodding legs, the other almost as straight and spry as a youth, walked side by side down the ridge path to Uncle Ezra's biggest tobacco barn.