--I will make up to you and them for
keeping me from--it. What do you suppose Mr. Newsome will do when he
finds out that you have moved and are ready to turn the place over to
him, even without any foreclosure?"

"Well, speculating on what men are a-going to do in this life is about
like trying to read turkey tracks in the mud by the spring-house, and
I'm not wasting any time on Gid Newsome's splay-footed impressions.
Come to-morrow night I'm a-going to pull the front door to for the
last time on all of us and early next morning Tom Crabtree's a-going
to take the letter and deed down to Gid in his office in the city for
me. Don't nobody have to foreclose on me; I hand back my debt dollar
for dollar outen my own pocket without no duns. To give up the land
immediate are just simple justice to him, and I'm a-leaving the Lord
to deal with him for trying to _buy_ a woman in her time of trouble.
We haven't told it on him and we are never a-going to. I wisht I could
make the neighbors all see the jestice in his taking over the land and
not feel so spited at him. I'm afraid it will lose him every vote
along Providence Road. 'Tain't right!"

"I know it isn't," answered Rose Mary. "But when Mrs. Rucker speaks
her mind about him and Bob chokes and swells up my heart gets warm. Do
you suppose it's wrong to let a friend's trouble heat sympathy to the
boiling point? But if you don't need me I'm going down to the
milk-house to work out my last batch of butter before they come to
drive away my cows." And Rose Mary hurried down the lilac path before
Uncle Tucker could catch a glimpse of the tears that rose at the idea
of having to give up the beloved Mrs. Butter and her tribe of
gentle-eyed daughters.

And as she stood in the cool gray depths of the old milk-house Rose
Mary's gentle heart throbbed with pain as she pressed the great cakes
of the golden treasure back and forth in the blue bowl, for it was a
quiet time and Rose Mary was tearing up some of her own roots. Her sad
eyes looked out over Harpeth Valley, which lay in a swoon with the
midsummer heat. The lush blue-grass rose almost knee deep around the
grazing cattle in the meadows, and in the fields the green grain was
fast turning to a harvest hue. Almost as far as her eyes could reach
along Providence Road and across the pastures to Providence Nob,
beyond Tilting Rock, the land was Alloway land and had been theirs for
what seemed always. She could remember what each good-by