Well then, of course we all began to ask him about Rance, said, 'Where is he? Is he here?'
 "'Oh, yes, he's here, all right,' said Bob, 'He'll be along in a minute now. You'll see him--and if you don't see him'"--suddenly she began to laugh--"'if you don't see him,' says Bob, 'why, by God, you'll smell him!' That's just the way he put it, you know, came right out with it, and of course, they had to laugh.... But, child, child!" with strong distaste she shook her head slightly--"That awful--oh! that awful, awful, odor! Poor feller! I don't reckon he could help it! But he al ways had it.... Now he was clean enough!" she cried out with a strong emphasis, "Rance always kept himself as clean as anyone you ever saw. And a good, clean-livin' man, as well," she said. "Never touched a drop of licker in all his life," she said decisively, "No, sir- neither him nor father.--Oh father! father!" she cried proudly, "Why father wouldn't let anyone come near him with the smell of licker on his breath! And let me tell you something!" she said solemnly, "If he had known that your papa drank, he'd never have let your mother marry him!--Oh! he wouldn't have let him enter his house, you know -he would have considered it a disgrace for any member of his family to associate with anyone who drank!" she proudly said. "And Rance was the same--he couldn't endure the sight or taste of it--but oh!" she gasped, "that awful, awful odor--that old, rank body-smell that nothing could take out!--awful, awful," she whispered. Then for a moment she stitched silently. "And of course," she said, "that's what they say about him--that's what they called him-----"
 "What, Aunt Maw?"
 "Why," she said--and here she paused again, shaking her head in a movement of strong deprecation, "to think of it!--to think, they'd have no more decency or reverence than to give a man a name like that! But, then, you know what soldiers are--I reckon they're a pretty rough, coarse-talkin' lot, and of course they told it on him--that was the name they gave him, the one they called him by."
 "What?"
 She looked at him quietly for a moment with a serious face, then laughed.
 "Stinkin' Jesus," she said shyly. "Whew-w!" she gently shrieked.
 "'Oh, you know they wouldn't say a thing like that!' I cried--but that was it, all right. To think of it!... And of course, poor fellow, he knew it, he recognized it, says, 'I'd do anything in the world if I could only get rid of it,' says, 'I reckon it's a cross the Lord has given me to bear.'... But there it was--that--old--rank--thing!--Oh, awful, awful!" she whispered, peering downward at the needle. "And say! yes! Didn't he tell us all that day when he came back that the Day of Judgment was already here upon us?--Oh! said Appomattox Court house marked the comin' of the Lord and Armageddon--and for us all to get ready for great changes! And, yes! don't I remember that old linen chart--or map, I reckon you might call it--that he kept strung around his neck, all rolled up in a ball, and hangin' from a string? It proved, you know, by all the facts and figures in the Bible that the world was due to end in 1865.... And there he was, you know, marchin' along the road with all the rest of them, with that old thing a-hangin' round his neck, the day they all came back from the war."
 She stitched quietly with deft, strong fingers for a moment, and then, shaking her head, said sadly: "Poor Rance! But I tell you what! He was certainly a good man," she said.
 Rance Joyner had been the youngest of all old Bill Joyner's children.
 Rance was a good twelve years the junior of Lafayette, George Webber's grandfather. Between them had been born two other brothers-
 John, killed at the battle of Shiloh, and Sam. The record of Rance Joyner's boyhood, as it had survived by tongue, by hearsay, which was the only record these men had, was bare enough in its anatomy, but probably fully accurate.
 "Well, now I tell you how it was," Aunt Maw said. "The rest of them used to tease him and make fun of him. Of course, he was a simple-minded sort of feller, and I reckon he'd believe anything they told him. Why, yes! Didn't father tell me how they told him Martha Alexander was in love with him, and got him to believin' it, and all!-
 And here Martha, you know, was the belle of the neighborhood, and could pick and choose from anyone she liked! But didn't they write him all sorts of fool love letters then, pretendin' to come from Martha, and tellin' him to meet her at all sorts of places--up on the Indian Mound, and down in the holler, or at some old stump, or tree, or crossroads--oh! anywheres!" she cried, "just to see if he'd be fool enough to go! And then, when she didn't turn up, wouldn't they write him another letter, sayin' her father was suspicious and watchin' her like a hawk! And didn't they tell him then that Martha had said she'd like him better if he grew a beard! And then they told him, you know, they had a special preparation all fixed up that would make his beard grow faster if he washed his face in it, and then didn't they persuade him to wash his face in old blue indigo water that was used to dye wool in, and didn't he go around there for weeks as blue in the face as a monkey!...
 "And didn't he come creepin' up behind her after church one day, and whisper in her car: 'I'll be there. Just swing the light three times and slip out easy when you're ready, and I'll be there waitin' for you!'-
 Why, he almost frightened the poor girl out of her wits. 'Oh!' she screamed, you know, and hollered for them to come and get him, 'Oh!
 Take him! Take him away!'--thinkin' he'd gone crazy--and of course that let the cat out of the bag. They had to tell it then, the joke they'd played on him." She smiled quietly, shaking her head slightly, with the sad and faintly troubled mirth of things far and lost.
 "But, I want to tell you," she said gravely in a moment, "they can say all they like about your great-uncle Rance, but he was always an upright and honest man.