re healthier, more dense, more cheerful, on
higher ground; one might have likened the grass road to the life of a man
pursuing its way between his two mysteriously different characters.

Silas had determined to make straight for home after having sent
assistance for Phyl, what he was going to do after arriving home was not
evident to his mind; he had a vague idea of clearing out somewhere so that
he might forget the business. He had done with Phyl, so he told himself.

But Phyl had not done with him. He had been scarcely ten minutes on his
road when her image came into his mind. He saw her, not as he had seen her
last seated on the straw in the miserable cabin, but as he had seen her at
the ball.

The curves of her limbs, the colour of her hair, her face, all were drawn
for him by imagination, a picture more beautiful even than the reality.

Well, he had done with her, and there was no use in thinking of her--she
cared for that cursed Pinckney and she was as good as dead to him, Silas.

An ordinary man would have seen hope at the end of waiting, but Silas was
not an ordinary man, a long and dubious courtship was beyond his
imagination and his powers. Courtship, anyhow, as courtship is recognised
by the world was not for him. He wanted Phyl, he did not want to write
letters to her.

There is something to be said for this manner of love-making, it is
sincere at all events.

He tried to think of something else and he only succeeded in thinking of
Phyl in another dress. He saw her as he saw her that first day in the
stable yard at Grangersons. Then he saw her as she was dressed that day in
Charleston.

Then he remembered the scene in the churchyard. He could still feel the
smack she had given him on the face. The smack had not angered him with
her but the remembrance of it angered him now. She would not have done
that to Pinckney.

Turning a corner of the road he came upon a clear space and on the borders
of the clearing to the right some cottages. There were some half-naked
pikaninnies playing in the grass before them; and a coloured woman,
washing at a tub set on trestles, catching sight of him, stood, shading
her eyes and looking in his direction.

Silas paused for a moment as if undecided, then he came on. He asked the
woman his whereabouts and then whether she could sell him some food. She
had nothing but some corn bread and cold bacon to offer him and he bought
it, paying her a dollar and not listening to h