eir father's
absence, and whose curious looks she was aware of upon her averted face,
her down-dropped eyelids. She felt alone indeed, with her uncle gone, and
the boys who had been as brothers to her almost since babyhood suddenly
become strangers, their interests and hers hostile, destructive to each
other.

Woman will go to woman in a pinch like this, and in spite of her
repugnance at the thought of Huldah, Judith late in the afternoon made
her way over to the Jim Cal cabin and asked concerning its mistress'
toothache.

"Hit's better," said Iley briefly. Her head was tied up in a medley of
cloths and smelled loud of turpentine, camphor, and a lingering bouquet
of assafoetida. She was not a hopeful individual to enlist in a
chivalrous enterprise.

"Huldy git back yet?" Judith asked finally.

"No, an' she needn't never git back," snapped Iley. "Her and Creed
Bonbright kin make out best they may. I don't know as I mind her bein'
broke off with Wade. One Turrentine in the fambly's enough fer me."

"Air her and Creed Bonbright goin' to be wedded?" inquired Judith
scarcely above her breath.

"_Air_ they?" echoed Xantippe, settling her hands on her hips and
surveying Judith with an angry stare, the dignity of which was sadly
impaired by a yellow flannel cloth-end which persisted in dabbling in her
eye. "Well, I should hope so! I don't know what gals is comin' to in this
day an' time--follerin' 'round after the young men like you do. Ef I'd a'
done so when I was a gal my mammy'd have took a hickory to me. That's
what she would. Here's Jim Cal be'n rarin' around here like a chicken
with its head off 'caze Huldy run away with Creed Bonbright, and here
_you_ air askin' me do I think Creed and Huldy is apt to marry. What kind
of women do ye 'low the Spiller gals is, anyhow?"

Judith turned away from so unpromising an ally. She was accused of
running after Creed Bonbright. When he got her message it would be with
Huldah Spiller beside him to help him read it. The thought was bitter. It
gave that passionate heart of hers a deadly qualm; but she put it down
and rose above it. Huldah or no Huldah, she could not let him die and
make no effort.

Leaving Jim Cal's cabin she walked out into the woods, and only as she
turned at the edge of the clearing and looked back to find Iley furtively
peering after her from the corner of the house did she realise that the
woman's words had been dictated because she had been taken into the