sted to Uncle Tucker.

"Oh, no; Gid handled the talk mighty kind-like. I think it's better to
let folks always chaw their own hard tack instead of trying to grind
it up friendly for them, cause the swalloring of the trouble has to
come in the end; but Gid minced facts faithful for me, according to
his lights. I didn't rightly make out just what he did expect, only we
couldn't go on as we were--and that I've been knowing for some time."

"Yes, we've both known that," said Rose Mary, still suspending her
announcement, she scarcely knew why.

"He talked like he was a-going to turn the Briars into a kinder orphan
asylum for us old folks and spread-eagled around about something he
didn't seem to be able to spit out with good sense. But I reckon I was
kinder confused by the shock and wasn't right peart myself to take in
his language." And Uncle Tucker sank into a chair, and Rose Mary could
see that he was trembling from the strain. His big eyes were sunk far
back into his head and his shoulders stooped more than she had ever
seen them.

"Sweetie, sweetie, I can tell you what Mr. Newsome was trying to say
to you--it was about me. I--I am going to be his wife, and you and
the aunties are never, never going to leave the Briars. He has just
left here and--and, oh, I am so grateful to keep it--for you--and
them. I never thought of that--I never suspected such--a--door in our
stone wall." And Rose Mary's voice was firm and gentle, but her deep
eyes looked out over Harpeth Valley with the agony of all the ages in
their depths.

But in hoping to conceal her tragedy Rose Mary had not counted on the
light love throws across the dark places that confront the steps of
those of our blood-bond, and in an instant Uncle Tucker's torch of
comprehension flamed high with the passion of indignation. Slowly he
rose to his feet, and the stoop in his feeble old shoulders
straightened itself out so that he stood with the height of his young
manhood. His gentle eyes lost the mysticism that had come with his
years of sorrow and baffling toil, and a stern, dignified power shone
straight out over the young woman at his side. He raised his arm and
pointed with a hand that had ceased to tremble over the valley to
where Providence Road wound itself over Old Harpeth.

"Rose Mary," he said sternly in a quiet, decisive voice that rang with
the virility of his youth, "when the first of us Alloways came along
that wilderness trail a slip of an English gi