73
XX. A Conversion 282
XXI. The Baptising 302
XXII. Ebb-Tide 315
XXIII. The Dumb Supper 326
XXIV. A Case of Walking Typhoid 340
XXV. A Perilous Passage 360
XXVI. His Own Trap 371
XXVII. Love's Guerdon 382
XXVIII. A Prophecy 393

Judith of the Cumberlands

Chapter I

Spring

"Won't you be jest dressed to kill an' cripple when you get that on!
Don't it set her off, Jeffy Ann?"

The village milliner fell back, hands on hips, thin lips screwed up, and
regarded the possible purchaser through narrowed eyes of simulated
ecstasy.

"I don't know," debated the brown beauty, surveying herself in a
looking-glass by means of an awkwardly held hand-mirror. "'Pears to me
this one's too little. Hit makes me look like I was sent for and couldn't
come. But I do love red. I think the red on here is mightly sightly."

Instantly the woman of the shop had the hat off the dark young head and
in her own hands.

"This is a powerful pretty red bow," she assented promptly. "I can take
it out just as easy as not, and tack it onto that big hat you like. I
believe you're right; and red certainly does go with yo' hair and eyes."
Again she gazed with languishing admiration at her customer.

And Judith Barrier was well worth it, tall, justly proportioned,
deep-bosomed, long-limbed, with the fine hands and feet of the true
mountaineer. The thick dusk hair rose up around her brow in a massive,
sculptural line; her dark eyes--the large, heavily fringed eyes of a
dryad--glowed with the fires of youth, and with a certain lambent shining
which was all their own; the stain on her cheeks was deep, answering to
the ripe red of the full lips.

In point of fact Mrs. Rhody Staggart the milliner considered her a big,
coarse country girl, and thought that a pair of stout corsets well pulled
in would improve her crude figure; but she dealt out compliments without
ceasing as she exchanged the red bow for the blue, and laboriously pinned
the headgear upon the bronze-brown coils, admonishing gravely, "Far over
to one side, honey--jest the way they're a-wearin' them in New York this
minute."

The buyer once more studied her mirror, and its dumb honesty told her
that she was beautiful. Then she looked about for some human eyes to make
the same communication.

"What's a-goin' on over yon at