and then pin him down to that contract."

"It looked like a good stroke of business and a fair one," said the lady
in an odd voice. It was so odd that Hays looked up. But she had somewhat
altered her position, and was gazing at the ceiling, and with her hand
to her face seemed to have just recovered from a slight yawn, at which
he hesitated with a new and timid sense of politeness.

"You're gettin' tired, ma'am?"

"Oh dear, no!" she said in the same voice, but clearing her throat with
a little cough. "And why didn't you see this Mr. Horseley after all? Oh,
I forgot!--you said you changed your mind from something you'd heard."

He had turned his eyes to the fire again, but without noticing as he
did so that she slowly moved her face, still half hidden by her hand,
towards him and was watching him intently.

"No," he said, slowly, "nothin' I heard, somethin' I felt. It mout hev
been that that set me off the track. It kem to me all of a sudden that
he might be sittin' thar calm and peaceful like ez I might be here,
hevin' forgot all about her and his trouble, and here was me goin' to
drop down upon him and start it all fresh agin. It looked a little like
persecution--yes, like persecution. I got rid of it, sayin' to myself
it was business. But I'd got off the road meantime, and had to find
it again, and whenever I got back to the track and was pointed for his
house, it all seemed to come back on me and set me off agin. When that
had happened three times, I turned round and started for home."

"And do you mean to say," said the lady, with a discordant laugh, "that
you believe, because YOU didn't go there and break the news, that nobody
else will? That he won't hear of it from the first man he meets?"

"He don't meet any one up where he lives, and only Briggs and myself
know it, and I'll see that Briggs don't tell. But it was mighty queer
this whole thing comin' upon me suddenly,--wasn't it?"

"Very queer," replied the lady; "for"--with the same metallic
laugh--"you don't seem to be given to this kind of weakness with your
own family."

If there was any doubt as to the sarcastic suggestion of her voice,
there certainly could be none in the wicked glitter of her eyes fixed
upon his face under her shading hand. But haply he seemed unconscious of
both, and even accepted her statement without an ulterior significance.

"Yes," he said, communingly, to the glaring embers of the hearth, "it
must have been a special revel