e didn' get ye. Ah'm sorry fo' him.' But 'f Ah tell him
this he might shoot him, 'n Ah couldn' bear that!"

Melissa ended with a shuddering cry, and Sydney remembered pityingly
how the girl's brother had been brought home dead two years ago, shot
in a quarrel whose primary cause was corn whisky.

"Tell me, Melissa, what did he mean by that threat,--that he'd make you
sorry you'd married Bud? How can he harm him?"

"Ah don' know, oh, Ah don' know," sobbed the poor girl; "only hit's
somethin' mahty mean fo' sho'. He's that low-down 'n sneaky hit's sho'
to be somethin' mean," she reiterated.

"It seems to me, Melissa, that if I were married, I shouldn't want to
have a secret that my husband didn't know. Of course, you understand
Bud best; but be sure, quite sure, that it is right before you keep
anything from him, won't you?"

A wail from within the cabin brought both the girls to their feet. The
fortunate rule that most women who have to worry over their husbands
have children to divert their minds was unbroken in Melissa's case. She
wiped her eyes, took the morsel from the bed, and kissed it
passionately, while Sydney looked on with avid gaze.

"May I take her for a little while, Melissa?" she asked, humbly. "She's
so sweet!"

V

A Strong Man's Weakness

Through all the year's round of weather, good and bad; through the snow
of January and the wind of March; through the glare of the warm April
days before the foliage casts its protective shade over the earth;
through the heat of midsummer and the glorious wine-clear air of
October, round again to the rigors of Christmas,--through all the
circle of the twelvemonth Melissa's door stood open.

To all appearance, ventilation is a hobby ridden and overridden in the
Carolina mountains, but the doors are not left open for hygiene's sake,
or even in hospitality's good name. It is to promote the performance of
the ordinary duties of life, more comfortably carried on in the light
than in the dark; for since the shuttered openings that serve as
windows are unglazed, the door must be left open to admit the sun's
bright rays.

The one room of Melissa's cabin was scrupulously clean. Pictures of the
President and of one of the happy victims of Somebody's Pleasant
Pain-Killer were tacked upon the walls beside long strings of dried red
peppers and of okra. A gourd, cut into the shape of a cup, hung upon a
nail by its crooked neck. The bed was covered neatly with a