disposition to regard herself as one family had made her
dissensions peculiarly bitter. There were times in this past year since
the close of the war when the minister had wondered if it had not been
the bitterest year of all, for notwithstanding that Kentucky did not
suffer from reconstruction as the states further south, remember that
she was, during and after the war, a state divided within herself.

There was trouble in the Pennyroyal air this afternoon.

"Farewell, Susan," Brother Bibbs suggested, as getting out his pocket
handkerchief he removed a slight moisture from his eyes. "Ambrose and
Sarah loved one another, that was the main thing. Theirs was a spring
mating, and, like the birds whose season they chose, brief, too brief in
passing." Attempting now to move, Brother Bibbs found it impossible,
since in his moment of sentiment Mrs. Barrows, leaning over her fence,
had linked her arm through his.

"Well, thank the Lord the little love bird didn't leave a young one in
the nest for me and the male to look after," she argued more leniently.
"Come right on in, Brother, and rest yourself, as I kin see Ambrose and
his two shadders advancin' toward us up the street, and a peskier pair
of shadders than Miner Hobbs and that dog, Moses, I ain't never seen,
but it's true the two of 'em ain't left Ambrose to himself a minute
since his wife died."

With her free hand Susan now waved a friendly greeting, even releasing
at the same time the vigour of her clutch with the other, for Brother
Bibbs was a fragile gentleman, an elderly widower, and, excepting in
matters pertaining to heaven or hell, greatly subject to the sisters in
his congregation.

Also the three figures were almost in plain sight, the little man
leaning as usual on the arm of the tall one, with Moses following but a
few steps behind.

Miner Hobbs walked with a slight limp. Wounded in the battle of Resaca,
he had never entirely recovered, and although not yet thirty years old
already showed signs of advancing age in his shrivelled appearance, like
a nut whose kernel has failed to ripen.

Moses, however, was remarkably well preserved and, barring a stiffness
in his legs and a few grizzled hairs, lighter of heart than in many a
year. For since that girl who had come to his home had suddenly gone
away with equal mysteriousness his master was once more his slave.

On the surface Ambrose seemed to have changed more than either Miner or
the dog. His face had