iling, he got the key from his pocket and handed it to her. "Help
yourself to anything you want for the party, or any other time," he said
in mountain fashion.

She looked down at that key with the pride of one to whom had been given
the freedom of a city. Its possession enabled her to bear it with a fair
degree of equanimity when Huldah Spiller, having "jest slung her clothes
anyway onto that line," as Judith phrased it to herself, came panting and
laughing across the slope between the two houses and called a gay
"Howdy!" to the visitor. The lively little red haired flirt professed
greatly to desire news of certain persons in Hepzibah, and as Creed was
departing sauntered unconcernedly beside him as far as the draw-bars,
detaining him in conversation there as long as possible. She had an
instinctive knowledge that Judith, looking on, was deeply disturbed.

Creed set his justice's office about a hundred yards from Nancy Card's
cabin, on the main road that led through the two Turkey Track
neighbourhoods out to Rainy Gap and the Far Cove settlement. The little
shack was built of the raw yellow boards which the new saw-mill was
ripping out of pine trees over on the shoulder of Big Turkey Track above
Garyville. Most of the mountain dwellers still preferred log houses, and
the lumber was sent down the mountain by means of a little gravity
railway, whose car was warped up after each trip by a patient old mule
working in a circular treadmill.

God knows with what high hopes the planks of that humble shanty were put
in place, with what visions sill and window-frame were shaped and joined,
Aunt Nancy going out and in at her household tasks calling good counsel
over to him; Beezy, the irrepressible, adding shaving curls to her red
frazzle; Little Buck, furnished with hammer and tacks, gravely assisting,
pounding his fingers only part of the time. Hens were coming off. Old
Nancy had a great time with notionate mothers hatching out broods under
the floor or in the stable loft, and the plaintive cheep-cheep! of the
"weedies" added its note to the chorus of sounds as the children followed
them about, now and then catching up a ball of fluff to pet it,
undeterred by indignant clucks from the parent.

As Creed whistled over his work, he saw a shadowy train coming down the
road, the people whom he should help, his people, to whose darkness he
should bring light and counsel. They knew so little, and needed so much.
True, his own knowl