mules up the road a piece for you."

And so it came about that Judith sprang to the back of the sorrel nag
from Creed Bonbright's hand. Creed, still bareheaded, and wholly
unconscious of the fact, walked beside her leading the mules. They passed
slowly up the street towards the mountainward edge of Hepzibah, talking
as they went in the soft, low, desultory fashion of their people.

The noises of the village, aroused from its usual dozing calm, died away
behind them. Beyond the last cabin they entered a sylvan world all their
own. While he talked, questioning and replying gravely and at leisure,
the man was revolving in his mind just what action would be best for the
prisoners whose cause he had espoused. As for Judith, she had forgotten
that such persons existed, that such trivial mischance as their arrest
had just been; she was concerned wholly with the immediate necessity to
charm, to subjugate the man.

[Illustration: "Creed walked beside her leading the mules."]

A rustic belle and beauty, used to success in such enterprises, in the
limited time at her command she brought out for Creed's subduing her
little store of primitive arts. She would know, Pete suggesting the
topic, if he didn't despise a mule, adding encouragingly that she did.
The ash, it seemed, was the tree of her preference; didn't he think it
mighty sightly now when it was just coming into bloom? His favourite
season of the year, his favoured colour, of such points she made inquiry,
giving him, in an elusive feminine fashion, ample opportunity to relate
himself to her. And always he answered. When all was spoken, and at the
first sharp rise she drew rein for the inevitable separation, she could
not have said that she had failed; but she knew that she had not
succeeded.

"Ye can jest turn Pete a-loose now," she told him gently. "He'll foller
from here on."

Bonbright, on his part, was not quite aware why he paused here, yet it
seemed cold and unfriendly to say good-bye at once, Again he assured her
that he would go immediately to the jail and find what could be done for
her cousins. There was no more to be said now--yet they lingered.

It was a blowy, showery March day, its lips puckered for weeping or
laughter at any moment, the air full of the dainty pungencies of new
life. Winged ants, enjoying their little hour of glory, swarmed from
their holes and turned stone or stump to a flickering, moving grey. About
them where they stood was the awaken