Certain you kin stay, Miss, and thank you. Just move on inside
your house now and lock the door, for there's some among us that mebbe
won't be anxious to be recognized later on as havin' give you--well, a
kind of house warmin' in the Pennyrile."

A moment later, while his companions were mounting their horses,
Ambrose lingered, groping before the closed door; soon he touched
something of strange formation with a smooth back and a prickly
arrangement on the underneath side. "Lord, what a weapon of defence--a
hairbrush," he drawled, slipping it into his pocket as he visioned the
girl's interrupted preparations for the night. And then when old Liza
had caught up with the others: "Boys, ain't to-night enough to cure us
of Ku-Kluxing, or whatever you want to call this gol darn business?"

CHAPTER VII

EM'LY DUNHAM

"HER name's Em'ly Dunham," announced Miner shortly.

Ambrose, who at this moment was arranging a pyramid design of their new
stock of calicoes on a counter in the front of their shop in order to
get the best colour effect, looked up quickly and then put his hand over
his lips.

"Whose named Em'ly Dunham?" he inquired in a partially stifled voice,
with his interest apparently still concentrated on his work.

"You know, the Yankee school teacher," Miner growled. He was standing
inside a kind of wire cage which separated the post-office department
from the rest of the store of Hobbs & Thompson, the charge of the mail
having recently been given to the two men.

"How'd you find out?"

"Letters!" The little man was assorting the mail with an energy that
Pennyroyal's one dozen epistles or less a day hardly justified. This was
one morning less than a week after the unsuccessful midnight excursion.

Ambrose now crossed his feet, resting his weight on his elbows against
the bales of cotton cloth. He was staring solemnly at his partner.
"Em'ly Dunham is a pretty name, Miner; kind of soft and gentle, yet with
plenty of spirit in it. I am reckoning some one in Pennyroyal ought to
try and make things up to her."

With a sigh the other man climbed up to perch on his high official
stool. "Ain't you never goin' to stop thinkin' of females and marryin',
Ambrose? I thought mebbe when you lost Sarah you was cured!"

Ambrose leaned farther over, shaking his head. "No," he answered simply,
"I reckon not. I wonder ef you have ever thought, Miner, of how much
them two little words--livin' and lovin'--are alike. I don'