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eternal tug-of-war for the same office now,” Uncle Noah Webster told her. “You ain’t likely to understand all you hear till you get up old enough to vote yourself.”
    “Both in the run-off?” asked Aunt Cleo.
    “Why, of course. And I don’t know how in the nation old Homer’s going to cheat him out of it,” said Uncle Noah Webster. “Homer’s my age. He can’t keep a jump ahead of Curly much longer.”
    “Now to me,” Uncle Percy was quavering, “what they ought to had sense enough to do was throw this case out that selfsame day in Foxtown.”
    “Think of the trouble it would have saved!” Aunt Beck sighed.
    “To me and the majority,” Uncle Curtis said, “Jack had acted the only way a brother and son could act, and done what any other good Mississippi boy would have done in his place. I fully expected ’em to throw the case right out the window.”
    “With nothing but a good word for Jack,” said Aunt Birdie.
    “Well, if Jack’s that lucky, then Curly’s just wasting his time trying to arrest him,” said Aunt Cleo.
    “Well, Jack wasn’t , and Curly wasn’t . So don’t go home,” Aunt Nanny teased her.
    “Well, they was mighty hard up for a spring docket in Ludlow if Jack’s the worst fellow they could get Foxtown to furnish,” said Uncle Curtis.
    “All right, Sister Cleo, would you call that a case?” asked Aunt Birdie in sassy tones.
    They cried, “We’re testing you.”
    “Now wait, now wait,” said Aunt Cleo. “I might could.”
    “Why, you could no more call that a case for court than I could call my wife flying!” said Uncle Percy. He put his hand on Aunt Nanny’s shoulder.
    “I might could,” said Aunt Cleo. “Even if all Jack got home with was the empty safe, I reckon you could call that safe-cracking. I don’t know what else you could call it.”
    The beating in the kitchen stopped again. Miss Beulah came out onto the porch. “If Jack had wanted to steal something, Sister Cleo, he could have run off with Curly’s fat pig and butchered it and done us all a little good at the same time! My son is not a thief.”
    “If a boy’s brought up in Grandpa Vaughn’s house, and knows drinking, dancing, and spot-card playing is a sin, you don’t need to rub it into his hide to make him know there’s something a little bit the matter with stealing,” Uncle Noah Webster cried.
    “Throwing his case out of court,” said Uncle Curtis, “was the only thing for Homer Champion to do, so he didn’t. He bound Jack over to the grand jury. Homer swore he couldn’t afford to do anything else. They’d call him playing favorites. And said Jack hadn’t done himself a world more good the way he treated the Foxtown jail,” said Uncle Dolphus.
    “Started nicking his way in a corner, prizing his way out as soon as he’d cleaned up his first dinner plate,” said Uncle Percy. “He worked faithful. But Jack is a Banner boy, and how was he to know that if you dug your way through the brick wall of the Foxtown jail with your pie knife, you’d come out in the fire station? Chief looks up from the checkerboard and says to him: ‘Son, I don’t believe I ever seen you before. You better turn around and scoot back in till they make up their minds what to do with you.’ And helped him scoot.”
    “Well, when they got Jack told they’d have to lock him up a little better now and keep him till spring, Jack just told them he’s a farmer,” said Uncle Curtis. “Jack told them just exactly who he was and just exactly where he lived. ‘I got my daddy’s hay to get in thebarn, his syrup to grind, his hog to kill, his cotton to pick and the rest of it,’ he says. ‘His seed in the ground for next year. And I got my schooling to finish. I can’t be here to sit and swing my foot while you scare up somebody to try me,’ he says.
    “So they told Jack, ‘Go on, then.’ And one of the other prisoners says, ‘We don’t keep room in the Foxtown jail for the likes of you country