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WHEN Railroad Jones had disappeared in the courthouse, Mr. Sandage said he had some electioneering to do, and that Abner might fool around and watch the crowd or do whatsoever he wished. According to the sardonic hill view of life, simple human leisure was a fooling around, a futility.

Abner's fooling consisted in leaning against the bole of one of the live oaks in the courtyard and watching the play of the square under his eyes. He stood as still almost as the trunk of the tree itself, for he was only a generation removed from Indian fighters and wild-game hunters, and the woodsman's manner of observing still clung to him.

Numberless things entertained Abner's simple eyes: the horses and mules strung along the courthouse fencel the hogs of the townspeople which ran at large in the streets and rooted in the droppings of the livestock; country dogs beneath their masters' wagons growling at the town dogs on the outside, for the antipathy between country and village extended down to the very dogs themselves.

On the inside of the courtyard groups of men stood about talking loudly or shouting from one group to another. Women and girls were seated or stood on the grass in the peculiar silence of hill women in public places. Where two or three acquaintances sat together they occasionally would lean over and whisper a remark and then relapse into their motionless watching. One or two held babies in their arms. If one of these infants whimpered, the mother would loosen her bodice, lift out one of her breasts, and suckle the child as unself-consciously as a cow her calf, and continue her silent gazing at the scene.