his father had the look of a man with something mysterious
hangin' over him, but he couldn't make it out what it was, though
he gave it a heap of study. He seen, too, that let him get a
taste of licker and he'd begin to throw out them hints, how if
folks only knowed the truth they'd be just naturally fallin' over
themselves fo' to do him a favor, instead of pickin' on him and
tryin' to down him.

"My grandfather said he never knowed a man, either, with the same
aversion agin labor as his father had. Folks put it down to
laziness, but they misjudged him, as come out later, yet he never
let on. He just went around sorrowful-like, and when there was a
piece of work fo' him to do he'd spend a heap of time studyin'
it, or mebby he'd just set and look at it until he was ready fo'
to give it up. Appeared like he couldn't bring himself down to
toil.

"Then one day he got his hands on a paper that had come acrost in
a ship from England. He was readin' it, settin' in the shade; my
grandfather said he always noticed he was partial to the shade,
and his wife was pesterin' of him fo' to go and plow out his
truck-patch, when, all at once, he lit on something in the paper,
and he started up and let out a yell like he'd been shot. 'By
gum, I'm the Earl of Lambeth!' he says, and took out to the
nearest tavern and got b'ilin' full. Afterward he showed 'em the
paper and they seen with their own eyes where Richard Keppel
Cavendish, Earl of Lambeth, had died in London. My great
grandfather told 'em that was his uncle; that when he left home
there was several cousins--which was printed in the paper, too
--but they'd up and died, so the title naturally come to him.