agin him."

"Well?" prompted Judith feverishly. "Did it do any good? Did she find out
anything?"

"Her and two others went to a desarted house at midnight--you know that's
the way, Jude."

Judith nodded impatiently.

"They tuck 'em each some bread an' salt, an' a candle to put the pins in
and name. They done everything backwards--ye have to do everything
backwards at a dumb supper. I don't know what happened when the candle
burned down to the other girls' pins--I forget somehow--but when the pin
Granny had stuck in the candle an' named for her lover was melted out and
fell, the do' opened and in he walked and set down beside her. They
wasn't a word said betwixt 'em. He tasted her salt, an' he et her bread;
and then he was gone like a flash! And at that very same identical time
that thar young man was a-crossin' the mountains of Virginny. It drawed
him--don't you see, Judith?--it drawed him to Granny. He came back to
her, shore enough, three months after, and they was wedded. He was our
grandpap, Adoniram Peavey--and every word of that's true."

Judith sank lower in her splint-bottomed chair, looking fixedly above the
flaxen heads at her knees, out through the open door, across the chip
pile, and away to the bannered splendours of the autumn slopes.

Cliantha laid her head in Judith's lap and began to whimper.

"They's awful things chanced at them thar dumb suppers," she shivered. "I
hearn tell of one gal that never had no true-love come, but jest a big
black coffin hopped in at the do' and bumped around to her place and
stopped 'side of her. My law, I believe I'd die ef sech as that should
chance whar I was at!"

Judith's introverted gaze dropped to the girl's face.

"I reckon that gal died," she suggested musingly, "I don't know as I'd
care much ef the coffin come for me. Unless--he--was to come, I'd ruther
it would be the coffin. Pendrilly," with a sudden upflash of interest,
"what is it that comes? Is it the man hisself--or a ghost?"

"'T ain't a ghost--a shore-enough ha'nt," argued Pendrilla soberly,
sitting back on her heels, "not unless 'n the man's dead, hit couldn't
be. Hit wasn't no ha'nt of Grandpap Peavey--and yet hit wasn't grandpap
hisself. I reckon it was a sort of seemin'--jest like a vision in the
Bible. Don't you, Jude?"

"I 'low," put in Cliantha doubtfully, "that if the right feller is close
by when he's called by a dumb supper, he comes hisself. But ef he's away
off somewhars that he cai