ed the two women at bay,
with one hand resting on the middling.

"This is my son," said his mother neutrally, turning to the young lady.
This information did not help David at all. He knew who HE was. He took
it for granted that every one present knew. The visitor at once
relieved the situation.

"This is the school-teacher," she said, coloring and smiling. "I have
been teaching here ever since you went away. And I am now an old
resident of this neighborhood."

Not a thing moved about David except a little smoke in the chimney of
his throat. But the young lady did not wait for more silence to render
things more tense. She stepped forward into the doorway beside his
mother and peered curiously in, looking up at the smoke-blackened
joists, at the black cross sticks on which the links of sausages were
hung, at the little heap of gray ashes in the ground underneath with a
ring of half-burnt chips around them, at the huge meat bench piled with
salted joints.

"And this is the way you make middlings?" she inquired, smiling at him
encouragingly.

The idea of that archangel knowing anything about middlings! David's
mind executed a rudimentary movement, and his tongue and lips responded
feebly:--

"This is the way."

"And this is the way you make hams, sugar-cured hams?"

"This is the way."

"And this is the way you make--shoulders?"

"This is the way."

David had found an answer, and he was going to abide by it while
strength and daylight lasted.

The young lady seemed to perceive that this was his intention.

"Let me see you HANG one," she said desperately. "I have never seen
bacon hanged--or hung. I suppose as I teach grammar, I must use both
participles."

David caught up the huge middling by the string and swung it around in
front of him, whereupon it slipped out of his nerveless fingers and
fell over in the ashes. It did not break the middling, but it broke the
ice.

"Can I help you?"

Those torturing, blistering words! David's face got as red as though it
had been rubbed with red pepper and saltpetre both. The flame of it
seemed to kindle some faint spark of spirit in him. He picked up the
middling, and as he looked her squarely in the eye, with a humorous
light in his, he nodded at the pieces of bacon by the entrance.

"Hang one of those," he said, "if you've a mind."

As he lifted the middling high, Gabriella noticed above his big red
hands a pair of arms like marble for lustre and whiteness (f