she had
hoped, but of a mountaineer even more taciturn than the driver. Her
fears became more acute.

"Can you tell me whether my daughter--young Mrs. Benoix--is ill?" she
asked her new conductor, anxiously.

The man took so long to answer that she thought he had not heard her,
and repeated the question.

He spat exhaustively--he was chewing tobacco--and finally replied, "The
gal at Teacher's house? Dunno as I've heerd tell."

"Aren't you a neighbor of hers?"

He gave a brief nod of assent.

"Then," she persisted, "you surely would have heard if she were ill,
wouldn't you?"

Another long pause. "Dunno as I would. We-all ain't much on talk."

"You certainly are not!" exclaimed Kate with some asperity.

It seemed to her anxious impatience that his taciturnity was deliberate,
hostile. He was a rough, unkempt, savage-looking creature; yet the
tenderness and skill with which he held little Kitty before him on his
ungainly mount would have done credit to any woman.

Kate remarked presently, observing this, "You've had children of your
own?"

"Thirteen on 'em."

"Thirteen? Splendid! All living?"

He spat again. "All daid. Died when they was babies."

"Good Heavens! This must be looked into!" exclaimed Kate, with a touch
of the old authority; and then remembered that she was not in her own
domain.

Presently, as they mounted, her attention was attracted to a woman
planting in a steep and barren-looking field, swinging her arms with the
fine free grace of a Millet figure.

"What's she trying to raise there--corn?" Kate inspected the soil with a
professional eye. "She won't do it--not in that soil! It needs
fertilizing."

Her companion remarked impartially, "Ben raisin' corn thar a right smart
while."

"All the more reason to give it a rest! I suppose you've never heard of
rotation of crops?"

"Yes, I hev," was the unexpected reply. "Fum Teacher." He spat with
great success, and added, "We-all ain't much on new-fangled idees."

Kate attempted no more conversation. She began to feel the fatigue of
the hurried journey, and to her secret fears was added a growing dread
of the end of it, a sudden shyness about meeting not only Jacqueline,
but Philip, after the conclusion to which her long meditations had led
her. She had recalled again and again, and always with a sharp twinge of
shame, the hurt bewilderment on Philip's face when she had offered him
Jacqueline in marriage. What a blind and stubborn fool s