loor as Minerva walked to and fro,
putting away the remnants of the coroner's repast. Already the children
were beginning to recover from their awestricken silence, and Melissa
could see them darting in and out among the fig-trees, firing pantomimic
revolvers at each other with loud vocal explosions.

The gap that the old man's death had made in the household was very
slight indeed; not half the calamity that the drying up of the spring
had been. Melissa acknowledged this to herself with the candor peculiar
to the very wise and the very ignorant, who alone seem daring enough to
look at things as they are.

"They hadn't ought to do anything to 'im; it ain't fair," she said to
herself stoutly; "an' he just stood up an' told on hisself because he
knowed he hadn't done anything bad. I sh'd think they'd be ashamed of
themselves to do anything to 'im after that."

"M'lissy!" Mrs. Sproul called from the foot of the stairs, her voice
dying away in a prolonged sniffle. "I wish 't you'd come down and help
Lysander hook up the team. He's got to go down t' the Mission, and it'll
be 'way into the night before he gets back."

The girl stood still a moment, biting her lip, and then hurried across
the floor and down the staircase as if pursued. Minerva had left the
kitchen, and there was no one to notice her unusual haste. Out at the
barn, Lysander, almost disabled by the accession of a stiff white shirt
and collar, was perspiring heavily in his haste to harness the mules.

"Minervy's got 'er heart set on havin' the Odd Fellers conduct the
funer'l," he said apologetically. "Strikes me kind o' onnecessary, but
't won't do no harm, I s'pose. She says yer paw was an Odd Feller 'way
back, but he ain't kep' it up. I dunno if they'll bury 'im or not."

The girl listened to him absently, straightening the mule's long ear
which was caught in the headstall, and fastening the buckles of the
harness. Her face was hidden by her drooping sunbonnet, and Lysander
could not see its pinched, quivering whiteness. They led the mules out
of the stable and backed them toward the wagon standing under a live
oak. Melissa bent over to fasten the tugs, and asked in a voice steadied
to lifeless monotony,--

"Do you think they'll do anything to him for it, Lysander?"

"I dunno, M'lissy," said the man. "He told the men at the camp it was
self-defense, and mebbe he can prove it; but bein' no witnesses, they
may lock 'im up fer a year or two, just to give '