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Lane County—a new act, a striking act. Abner moved aimlessly along, smiling in anticipation of whatever it might be.

A group of hillmen were standing on a corner of the square, watching a man in their midst draw a figure in the dust with his whipstock. The whole group had the gnarled, almost grotesque faces developed by generations of illiteracy; the way the man in the centre stooped to the dirt and made his designs upon it spoke his familiarity with it. He was not finical about it. One knew he worked in it, turned it over, hoed, ploughed, scraped it. His companions were guffawing and wheezing in awkward hill laughter.

For the first time in his life Abner felt there might be a difference in the quality of these men and the more sophisticated county-site folk, such as Sharp and Jones and Ditmas. This critical feeling of difference vanished almost as quickly as it came, and Abner went up to the group. Already he was beginning to smile through sympathy with their mirth. The man with the whip was saying:

"This here line is Turkey holler. Here it heads into four other little hollers, like this"—he made marks in the dust at an angle to the main line. "They air all growed up so dang thick with trees, it's dark in there all the time: white oaks, poplars, black walnuts, purtiest you ever see. Well, what did ol' Railroad do but walk this damn fool Yankee up one side o' Turkey holler into one o' them little hollers headin' into it here at the top; the he clumb the hill, got over into the next holler, an' walked back down through Turkey agin. They turned aorund, went up Turkey agin, got into the next little holler, clumb another hill, started down it a third time . . ." Here the narrator became so convulsed he could not go on. His hearers were reeling around him wheezing, whooping, and gasping for breath.

"Well, I be dad-snatched—jest showin' him the same thing over an' over!"

"Yeh, ever' one of these little had hollers counted the whole thing! Made that damn fool Yankee b'lieve he was dropped into eight or ten square mile o' solid oak an' walnut!"