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reckon she will when I tell her to go, and she ought to be real pleased to have you taking her,” Ty Ty said emphatically, spitting upon a wild onion stem at his feet. “Don’t make the mistake of thinking I ain’t got a hand over my own children, Pluto. She’ll go, all right, when I tell her to go. She won’t mind it a bit.”
    “If Pluto is going to take her, then let’s get started for the swamps, Pa,” Buck said. “It’s getting late. I want to get back here by midnight, if I can.”
    “Boys,” Ty Ty said, “I’m mighty proud to hear you say you want to be up and doing. We’ll start right off. Pluto, you drive Darling Jill over to Scottsville and leave her with Rosamond and Will. It’s mighty fine of you. I’m mighty much obliged to you, Pluto.”
    Ty Ty ran up the porch steps and back to the yard again. He had forgotten for a moment how excited he was over the prospect of finding the albino.
    “Griselda, when Darling Jill gets back, tell her to go over to Horse Creek Valley and bring Rosamond and Will back tomorrow morning. She’ll have to explain what we want with them, and you can tell her what to say to them. We need them to help us dig. Tell Darling Jill that me and the boys have gone to the swamp after that all-white man, and tell her we’re going to strike the lode in no time. I won’t say when, but I can say in no time. I’ll buy you and her both the finest clothes the merchants in the city can show. I’ll get the same for Rosamond, when we strike the lode. I want Rosamond and Will to know we need their help pretty bad, so they’ll come tomorrow and help us. We’ll all start in as soon as dinner is over tomorrow, and dig and dig and dig.”
    Ty Ty fumbled in his pocket a moment, at length taking out a quarter and handing it to Griselda.
    “Take this and buy yourself a pretty the next time you go to town,” he urged. “I wish I had more to give you, because you’re so much prettiness and when I look at you, I can’t help it, but we ain’t struck the lode yet.”
    “Let’s get going, Pa,” Shaw said.
    Buck cranked up the big seven-passenger car and idled the engine while his father was giving Griselda final instructions for Darling Jill. Just when Buck thought Ty Ty was ready to get into the car, he wheeled around and ran down to the barn. A few moments later he came running back with three or four more plow-lines. He tossed them into the back seat with the others.
    Ty Ty stood looking at Pluto on the steps for several minutes, his brow wrinkled, intent upon him as if he were trying to remember something he had meant to tell him before leaving. Unable to recall it, he turned and climbed into the car with Buck and Shaw. Buck raced the engine, and a cloud of black smoke blew out of the exhaust pipe. Ty Ty turned around in his seat and waved good-by to Griselda and Pluto.
    “Be sure and remember to tell Darling Jill what I told you,” he said. “And tell her to come home the first thing tomorrow morning without fail.”
    Shaw had to reach over his father and shut the door that Ty Ty had been too excited to close. With a roar and a rank odor from the exhaust pipe, the big car shot out of the yard and rumbled into the highway. They were out of sight a moment later.
    “I hope they find that albino,” Pluto said, not particularly to Griselda. “If they don’t find him, Ty Ty will come back swearing I lied about him. I swear to God, the fellow said he saw him down there. I didn’t lie about it. The fellow said he saw him in the thicket on the edge of the swamp cutting wood as big as life. If Ty Ty doesn’t find him and bring him home, he’ll take his vote away from me. That’ll be real bad. And that’s a fact.”
    Griselda had gone to the porch while Pluto was talking. She could not hear what he was mumbling to himself, for one thing; and she did not care to stand out in the yard with him, for another. She sat down in a rocker and watched the back of Pluto’s head. From the