ell 'em to talk as little as possible and leave the
man alone. He's got enough to stand up under."

Before the day was over there were women enough in the hillside cabin.
Half a dozen faded black calico riding-skirts hung over the saddles of
half a dozen horses tethered in the wood round the house, while inside
half a dozen excellent souls disposed themselves in sympathetic couples
about the two rooms.

Three sat in the front room, their sunbonnets drawn well down over their
faces in the true mourner's spirit, one at the head of the bed slowly
moving a fan to and fro over the handkerchief-covered face upon the
pillow. A dead silence pervaded the place, except when it was broken by
occasional brief remarks made in a whisper.

"She was a mighty purty-lookin' young critter," they said. "A sight
younger-lookin' than her man."

"What's the child?"

"Gal."

"Gal? That's a pity. Gals ain't much chance of bein' raised right whar
they're left."

"Hain't they any folks, neither on 'em?"

"Nobody don't know. Nobody hain't heerd nothin' about 'em. They wus
kinder curi's about keepin' to themselves."

"If either on 'em had any folks--even if they wus only sort o' kin--they
might take the chile."

"Mebbe they will. Seems to reason they must have some kin--even if they
ain't nigh."

Then the silence reigned again and the woman at the bed's head gave her
undivided attention to the slow, regular motion of her palm-leaf fan.

In the room beyond a small fire burned in spite of the warmth of the day,
and divers small tin cups and pipkins simmered before and upon the
cinders of it, Aunt Mornin varying her other duties by moving them a
shade nearer to the heat or farther from it, and stirring and tasting at
intervals.

Upon a low rocking-chair before the hearth sat the wife of the family man
before referred to. She was a tall, angular creature, the mother of
fifteen, comprising in their number three sets of twins. She held her
snuff-stick between her teeth and the child on her lap, with an easy
professional air.

"I hain't never had to raise none o' mine by hand since Martin Luther,"
she remarked. "I've been mighty glad on it, for he was a sight o'
trouble. Kinder colicky and weakly. Never done no good till we got him
off the bottle. He'd one cow's milk, too, all the time. I was powerful
partickerler 'bout that. I'd never have raised him if I hadn't bin. 'N'
to this day Martin Luther hain't what 'Poleon and Orlando is."