hile after waking
next morning she lay enjoying that new phase of her enfranchisement.
From that day forward there would be no need of rising with the dawn.
Time was her own now; she could stretch like a lady who has servants to
bring and take away, until the sun came into her chamber, if she
choose.

Downstairs there were dim sounds of people moving about, and the odors
of breakfast were rising. Thinking that it would be well, for the sake
of appearances, to go down and assist them, she got up and dressed.

She stopped before the glass to try her hair in a new arrangement, it
was such bright hair, she thought, for mourning, but yet as somber as
her heart, bringing it a little lower on the brow, in a sweep from the
point of parting. The effect was somewhat frivolous for a season of
mourning, and she would have to pass through one, she sighed. After a
while, when she went out into Morgan's world of laughter and chatter and
fine things. She smiled, patting her lively tresses back into their
accustomed place.

Ollie was vain of her prettiness, as any woman is, only in her case
there was no soul beneath it to give it ballast. Her beauty was pretty
much surface comeliness, and it was all there was of her, like a great
singer who sometimes is nothing but a voice.

Sol Greening was in the kitchen with his wife and his son's wife and two
of the more distant neighbor women who had remained overnight. The other
men who had watched with Sol around Isom's bier had gone off to dig a
grave for the dead, after the neighborly custom there. As quick as her
thought, Ollie's eyes sought the spot where Isom's blood had stood in
the worn plank beside the table. The stain was gone. She drew her breath
with freedom, seeing it so, yet wondering how they had done it, for she
had heard all her life that the stain of human blood upon a floor could
not be scoured away.

"We was just gettin' a bite of breakfast together," said Mrs. Greening,
her red face shining, and brighter for its big, friendly smile.

"I was afraid you might not be able to find everything," explained
Ollie, "and so I came down."

"No need for you to do that, bless your heart!" Mrs. Greening said. "But
we was just talkin' of callin' you. Sol, he run across something last
night that we thought you might want to see as soon as you could."

Ollie looked from one to the other of them with a question in her eyes.

"Something--something of mine?" she asked.

Mrs. Greening