e way, resided
in the eyes. Instead of being held downcast in the old attitude of
deference, they now looked across at him, straight level,
and--summoning!)

Immobile age and Old Dalton's habit kept him from any visible expression
of the welcome that lay warm (though tempered by an odd feeling of
strangeness due to that look she carried in her eyes) in his soul.

"Ey, ma--back?" he murmured, as he looked her up and down a moment, to
get used to the sight of her, and then edged on in a vague, indifferent
way toward the outside door and the chip-pile.

Mother Dalton followed, without comment or change of expression, but a
tear seemed to flit and zigzag its way down the dried courses of her
thousand wrinkles. She stood in the doorway, facing the moon as it rose
above the roof of the granary. If she was a little translucent for so
solid-shaped an old presence, Old Dalton did not notice it, as he picked
up his ax and went handily to his wood-chopping.

She maintained her position on the step quietly, her hands folded across
her waistband, her feet bluish and bare upon the pine sill. But, though
she did not interrupt by word or movement, Old Dalton (who had used to
be no more conscious of her than of the wind or the daylight) felt
to-night as embarrassed by her proximity as though she were a stranger
and a hostile presence. He was sweating and irritable when he finished
his sticks; and, as he stood his ax against the end of a log, twisted
his head around sharply, with the intent of asking the old woman why she
was "gappin' there, place o' goin' and gettin' thon bed warmed up."

But the old pioneer himself fell agape as he encountered the look on her
face. There is a vast respect in the country for that many-phased
quality called "second sight"; and, if Old Dalton had ever seen signs of
the possession of it on a human face, he saw them on his old woman's
now. It struck him, too, for the first time definitely, as he groped
about in the fog of his old mind for the reason she looked so queer, so
like a stranger to him, that Mother Dalton had brought some odd quality
back from this "visit" she had been making.

There grew upon Old Dalton something of fear. He stood fumbling and
tetering, his hands wandering nervously up and down the edge of his
coat.

Mother Dalton stood upon that step, facing the half-moon that looked
down from above the grove. Her glance was not directed toward him, but
up and away. In the pupils of her