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By Root 1391 0

talkative person who ever lived in Stay More. That night she began: “My name’s Sleeny Denton, and I’m seventeen year old, and I’ve got two older brothers and three older sisters that have all done flew the roost, and we lived up Right Prong Holler all our life, my daddy and mom were gone visitin kinfolks in Demijohn that day ye came, that’s how come ye didn’t meet ’em, and I’d jist had the everlastin wits skeered out o’ me by them bushwhackers that lit far to the house, ’till you come and run ’em off, and then done what ye done, which I have to say I didn’t mind a bit, it was the most fun, I’m tellin ye, and I wouldn’t care if ye did it again soon as ye git done eatin, although not in the same room with the baby, because I’m strict about that, you’ll find, but aint he the cutest little spadger ever ye saw, looks jist lak ye, same eyes and all, ’though I think his nose kinder favors my daddy’s, and he’s got Mom’s ears, but you kin jist tell by lookin at him that he’ll grow up to be big and strong lak you, why, my, I never seed ary man in my life as big and strong as you, it’s a sin to Moses how big and strong, and I tole my daddy what yore uniform looked lak, and ast my daddy what did them bars on yore collar mean, and my daddy said them bars meant ye were a colonel! and my sakes alive! if I haven’t always wanted to marry me a colonel! why, when I was jist a little chicky I used to tell my playmates I was a-fixin to marry me a colonel when I got growed up, and now jist look at me! I’ve done went and done it!”

After Isaac had finished eating, he stood up, belched to signify his satisfaction with the meal, and began stretching. While he was stretching, Salina, first putting the baby into the other house of the dogtrot, climbed him. She was not hysterical now, but she went on talking, a blue streak, the whole time he did her, although her words were interlaced with coos and burbles and were terminated by a squeal. Thus their second-born, Monroe Ingledew, was conceived. In fact, one of the few things of distinction about John Ingledew, their third son, apart from his being the father of the next great wave of Ingledews in our ongoing saga, was that he was the first of Isaac’s and Salina’s children to be conceived when his parents were in a horizontal rather than a vertical position, for it took them that long to discover, albeit accidentally, that it was possible to do it while lying down. It may be noted in passing that Isaac Ingledew was the only Ingledew male who never again got the frakes. He worked hard, but not hard enough to get the frakes, or, if he did work hard enough to get the frakes, Salina’s hearty, refreshing sensuality gave him immunity.

He was, as I say, a miller. He was not the first; we may have glimpsed, chapters back, the rude gristmill of Zachariah Dinsmore, which was a primitive “tub wheel” mill, on Swains Creek. Isaac’s mill was on Banty Creek, near its mouth where it empties into Swains Creek, where it was swiftest, swift enough to power the large undershot wheel that powered the grindstone. But soon after he had built the mill, Banty Creek went dry. Rather than turn the whole mill structure around so that its wheel would be in Swains Creek (which wouldn’t have worked anyway—or, rather, it would have turned the wheel in the opposite direction, and, Isaac realized, unground the meal), he decided to convert to steam power. A boiler and an engine and the necessary machinery would cost him a thousand dollars, which he did not have. Reticently he asked his father, recently retired from the governorship, for a loan, but Jacob claimed that he had spent all his money building his trigeminal house, a lame excuse, but Isaac, being taciturn, did not argue.

Learning that the cities suffered a scarcity of bacon, Isaac took his gun into the woods and slaughtered five hundred razorback hogs, dressed them with the help of his wife and brother, and carted them off to Springfield, Missouri, where he easily sold them for more than enough to purchase the boiler and engine and machinery, which he purchased there and