He
toiled casually in a small cornfield and a yet smaller truck
patch, but his work always began late, when it began at all, and
he was easily dissuaded from continuing it; indeed, his attitude
toward it seemed to challenge interference.
In the winter, when the weather conditions were perfectly
adjusted to meet certain occult exactions he had come to require,
Yancy could be induced to go into the woods and there labor with
his ax. But as he pointed out to Hannibal, a poor man's capital
was his health, and he being a poor man it behooved him to have a
jealous care of himself. He made use of the dull days of mingled
mist and drizzle for hunting, work being clearly out of the
question; one could get about over the brown floor of the forest
in silence then, and there was no sun to glint the brass
mountings of his rifle. The fine days he professed to regard
with keen suspicion as weather breeders, when it was imprudent to
go far from home, especially in the direction of the Crenshaw
timber lands, which for years had been the scene of all his
gainful industry, and where he seemed to think nature ready to
assume her most sinister aspect. Again in the early spring, when
the young oak leaves were the size of squirrel's ears and the
whippoorwills began calling as the long shadows struck through
the pine woods, the needs of his corn ground battled with his
desire to fish. In all such crises of the soul Mr. Yancy was
fairly vanquished before the struggle began; but to the boy his
activities were perfectly ordered to yield the largest return in
contentment.
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