And it would take me fourteen years to git twenty-one, and I never could live with my mother again after Hanner gets done her time.

'Cause, you see, Hanner'll be through in three more year, and I'll be ten and able to work, and we'll git a little place about as big as Granny Sanders's, and--" Ralph did not hear another word of what Shocky said that afternoon.

For there, right before them, was Granny Sanders's log-cabin, with its row of lofty sunflower stalks, now dead and dry, in front, with its rain-water barrel by the side of the low door, and its ash-barrel by the fence.

In this cabin lived alone the old and shriveled hag whose hideousness gave her a reputation for almost supernatural knowledge.

She was at once doctress and newspaper.