, and sauntered toward
the stable, with his head thrown back, peering from under the brim, as
if its inconvenient position were a matter entirely beyond his control.

Melissa was washing dishes at a table in the corner of the kitchen. She
hurried a little, trembling in her eagerness to speak to Lysander alone.
She carried the dishpan to the kitchen door to empty it, and the
chickens came scuttling with half-flying strides from the shade of the
geraniums where they were dusting themselves, and then fled with a
chorus of dismayed squawks as the dish-water splashed among them. The
girl hung the pan on a nail outside, and flung her apron over her head.
She could see Lysander's tilted hat moving among the low blue gums
beside the shed. She drew the folds of her apron forward to shade her
face, and went down the path with a studied unconcern that sat as ill
upon her as haste. Lysander was mending the cultivator; he looked up,
but not as high as her face.

"'Llo, M'lissy," he said, as kindly as was compatible with a rusty bit
of wire between his teeth.

The girl leaned against the shaded side of a stack of baled barley hay.

"Lysander," she began quaveringly, "Lysander, if you'd seen paw shot,
an' knowed all about it, could they make you tell--would you think you'd
ought to tell?" She hurried her questions as they had been crowding in
her sore conscience. "I mean, of course, if you'd seen it, Lysander."

Her brother-in-law straightened himself, and set his hat on the back of
his head without speaking. Melissa could feel him looking at her
curiously.

"Of course, that's all I mean, Lysander,--just if you'd seen it; would
you tell?" she faltered.

"M'lissy," said the man impressively, "if I'd seen my own paw killed,
an' nobody asked me to tell, I'd keep my mouth most piously shut; that's
what I'd do."

"But if he was mad, Sandy, an' tried to kill somebody else, and,
oh,"--her voice broke into a piteous wail,--"if they wuz thinkun' o'
hangin' 'im!"

"They ain't a-goin' to hang nobody, M'lissy," said Lysander
confidently,--"hangin' has gone out o' fashion. And I don't think it's
becomin' fer the fam'ly to interfere, especially the women folks;
besides, we don't none of us know nothin' about it, you see. Don't you
fret about things you don't know nothin' about. The law'll have to take
its course, M'lissy. That young feller's goin' to git off
reasonable,--very reasonable, indeed, considerin'."

Melissa rubbed her feet i