The syrup begun to cook down good in the kettle and Luty begun skimming. About the third skimming we all begun to lick and eat. Jim cut him and me a pair of little paddles outen cane-stalks and Luty put a extry thick batch of skimmings on our saucers and we some kind of enjoyed ourselves. After a while the syrup begun to hiss and the rank smell of the cane was gone. Me and Jim slipped up to the kettle and raked some of the thickest goody from around the edge and Luty romped on us the way we’d all got romped on when we was young uns to a syrup boiling and done the same trick. Then the syrup begun to cook with a plop! like frogs a-jumping and Luty’s long-handled skimmer sailed over it like a swallow darting.

Folks hollered, “Luty’s fixing to pour!”

All the young uns come a-running to watch. Luty sure is clever with his pouring.

“Stand back for the spattering!” he called.

He dipped his ladling bucket back and to so fast you couldn’t foller it. He kept a steady stream like a gold creek, running down the little trough into the cooling trough. The syrup around the edge of the kettle cooked down into candy and the young uns went for it something comical to see. And Jim and me right with them, ’til I got ashamed of taking up room half a dozen young uns could of used, and I backed off.

Then Luty said, “Well, reckon nobody won’t be craving no more cane-juice. I’ll turn old Snort a-loose now, to rest and graze.”

He on-loosed the mule from the cane-mill. And what did the creetur do? What did he do? He stood a minute, studying, and he lit out. That’s what he done. He lit out acrost Luty’s stubbly cane-field, heading for Jim’s place t’other side of town, the way I’d seed him do it a hundred times. But there was something on-natural about the way he lit out and Jim and Luty and Will and me takened out after him.

He cut into my sweet-potato field. And what did he do there? Not go on like always. No. He stopped stock-still in the middle of it. And then what did he do? He begun to go in circles. Right in the middle of my sweet-potato patch, he goed around and around in circles.

“He’s gone crazy,” Will said.

“He’s drunk,” Jim said. “That’s what’s the matter. Luty’s been corrupting him again.”

“He’s more’n drunk or crazy,” I said. “His time has come.”