to showin' me mule tracks for b'ar tracks, he's barkin' up de wrong
tree! Dat when he tells me dat he sees panfers a-promenadin' round in de
short grass or hidin' behime rocks in de open, he hain't talkin' to no
nigger chile, but a growed woman! Ye kin tell him dat Mammy Curtis lived
in de woods afo' he was born, and hez seen more b'ars and mountain lyuns
dan he hez hairs in his mustarches."
The word "Mammy" brought a flash of recollection to Fleming.
"I am very sorry," he began; but to his surprise the negro woman burst
into a good-tempered laugh.
"All right, honey! S'long's you is Marse Fleming and de man dat took
dat 'ar pan offer Tinka de odder day, I ain't mindin' yo' frens'
bedevilments. I've got somefin fo' you, yar, and a little box," and she
handed him a folded paper.
Fleming felt himself reddening, he knew not why, at which Faulkner
discreetly but ostentatiously withdrew, conveying to his other partner
painful conviction that Fleming had borrowed a pan from a traveling
tinker, whose negro wife was even now presenting a bill for the same,
and demanding a settlement. Relieved by his departure, Fleming hurriedly
tore open the folded paper. It was a letter written upon a leaf torn
out of an old account book, whose ruled lines had undoubtedly given
his partners the idea that it was a bill. Fleming hurriedly read the
following, traced with a pencil in a schoolgirl's hand:--
Mr. J. FLEMING.
Dear Sir,--After you went away that day I took that pan you brought back
to mix a batch of bread and biscuits. The next morning at breakfast dad
says: "What's gone o' them thar biscuits--my teeth is just broke with
them--they're so gritty--they're abominable! What's this?" says he, and
with that he chucks over to me two or three flakes of gold that was in
them. You see what had happened, Mr. Fleming, was this! You had better
luck than you was knowing of! It was this way! Some of the gold you
washed had got slipped into the sides of the pan where it was broke,
|