he hesitated, and looked questioningly at her
uncle--"Mandy's been awful good to all of us, and she liked Mr.
Stoddard."

"We'll try it," said Pros Passmore, and they set out together.

They climbed in silence, using a little-travelled woods-road, scarce
more than two deep, grass-grown ruts, full of rotting stumps. Suddenly a
couple of children playing under some wayside bushes leaped up and ran
ahead of them, screaming.

"Maw--he's comin' back, and he's got a woman with him!"

A turn in the road brought the Nooning-Spring cabin in sight, a tiny,
one-roomed log structure, ancient and ruinous; and in its door a young
woman standing, with a baby in her arms, staring with all her eyes at
them and at their approaching couriers.

She faltered a step toward the dilapidated rail fence as they came up.

"Howdy," she said in a low, half-frightened tone. Then to Uncle Pros,
"We-all was mighty uneasy when you never come back."

Involuntarily the old man's hand went to that vertebra whose eighth-inch
displacement had been so lately reduced.

"Have I been here?" he asked. "I was out of my head, and I don't
remember it."

The young woman looked at him with a hopeless drawing of scant, light
eyebrows above bulging gray eyes. She chugged the fretting baby gently
up and down in her arms to hush it. Johnnie saw her resemblance to
Mandy. Apparently giving up the effort in regard to the man, Zack
Peavey's wife addressed the girl as an easier proposition.

"He was here," she said in a sort of aside. "He stayed all night
a-Saturday. Zack said he was kinder foolish, but I thought he had as
much sense as most of 'em." Her gaze rested kindly on the old man. The
children, wild and shy as young foxes, had stolen to the door of the
cabin, in which they had taken refuge, and were staring out wonderingly.

"Well, we'll have to ask you could we stay to-night," Johnnie began
doubtfully. "My uncle's been out of his head, and he got away from the
folks at the hospital. I came up to hunt for him. I've just found
him--but we aren't going right back. I met a man out there on the road
that did something to him that--that--" she despaired of putting into
words that the woman could comprehend the miracle which she had seen the
stranger work--"Well, Uncle Pros is all right now, and we'd like to stay
the night if we can."

"Come in--come in--the both of you," urged the woman, turning toward the
cabin. "'Course, ye kin stay, an' welcome. Set and re