end at our house? Mother and Father sure would be glad to see you."
"My weak end is my legs, boy, though I ain't quite sho' it ain't my head sence I war tied up," returned the old man with a chuckle. "No, lad, I can't run up nowhar. I couldn't do that. I ain't never took the lessons how to 'nipulate them tools and whatcha-may-call 'ems you toney folks eats with, and, when I shovels peas in my mouth with these hyuh narrow-bladed eatin'-knives they gives you these days, blister my boots, if half o' them slippery green pellets don't slide off into my lap.
"A ole-timer like me don't feel good and comfortable in the towns nowadays noway; they is always a scramblin' 'em upside down, and what you see one day you don't see no mo' the nex', till my brains is well-nigh addled. But, though the ships may change, this hyuh water don't. So I'll stick down hyuh where nobody can't be a-messin' and a-meddlin' with the scenery, and what I sees one night I knows will be thar the nex' mornin'.
"The old time towns war the places fer me, when, seem like all the houses had been there a
