et as bird-songs. The clamour of little falls, the solemn suggestion
of wind in the pines, the sweet broken jangle of cow-bells, a catbird in
a tree--a continuous yet zigzag sort of warble, silver and sibilant notes
alternating,--the rare wild turkey's call along a deeply embowered
creek--one by one all these came to Judith's dreaming ears, clear,
perfect, individual, on the majestic sea of silence about her.

She turned Selim's head at a little intersecting trail, and rode
considerably out of her way to pass the old Bonbright place and brood
upon its darkened windows and grass-besieged doorstone. Some day all that
would be changed. Still in her waking dream she unsaddled Selim at the
log barn, and turned him loose in his open pasture. She laid off her town
attire, put on her cotton working-dress, kindled afresh the fire on the
broad hearthstone and got supper. Her Uncle Jephthah and Blatch
Turrentine came in late, weary from their work of hauling corn to that
destination which old Nancy had announced as disreputably indefinite. The
second son of the family, Wade, a man of perhaps twenty-four, was with
them, and had already been told of the mishap to Andy and Jeff.

Old Jephthah sat at the head of the board, his black beard falling to his
lap, his finely domed brow relieved against a background of shadows.
Judith needed the small brass lamp at the hearthstone, and a tallow
candle rather inadequately lit the supper-table. The corners of the room
were in darkness; only the cloth and dishes, the faces and hands of those
about the table showed forth in sudden light or motion.

Hung on the rough walls, and glimpsed in occasional flickers only, were
Judith's big maple bread-bowl, the churn-dash, spurtle, sedge-broom, and
a round glass bottle for rolling piecrust; cheek by jowl with old
Jephthah's bullet moulds and the pot-hooks he had forged for Judith.
There were strings of dried pumpkin, too, and of shining red peppers. On
a low shelf, scarce visible at all in the dense shadow, stood a keg of
sorghum, and one beside it of vinegar, flanked by the butter-keeler and
the salt piggin with its cedar staves and hickory hoops. And there, too,
was the broken coffee-pot in which garden seeds were hoarded.

"What's all this I hear about Andy and Jeff bein' took?" inquired a
plaintive voice from the darkened doorway whose door, with its heavy,
home-made latch, swung back against the wall on its great, rude, wooden
hinges, as abruptly