t offer to help her mount. He watched her again as she rode away,
and when she looked back he turned with a queer feeling into his shop.
Two days later Jeb Mullins came by.

"Whad' I owe ye?" he asked.

"Nothin'," said Lum gruffly.

The next day the old man brought down a broken plough on his shoulder,
and to the same question he got the same answer:

"Nothin'." So he went back and teased Martha, who blushed when she
next passed the door of the shop, and this time Lum did not go out
to watch her down the road.

Sunday following, Parson Small, the circuit-rider, preached in the
open-air "meetin'-house," that had the sky for a roof and blossoming
rhododendron for walls, and--wonder of wonders--Lum Chapman was there.
In the rear he sat, and everybody turned to look at Lum. So simple was
he that the reason of his presence was soon plain, for he could no more
keep his eyes from the back of Martha Mullins's yellow head than a needle
could keep its point from the North Pole. The circuit-rider on his next
circuit would preach the funeral services of Uncle Billy Hall, who had
been dead ten years, and Uncle Billy would be draped with all the virtues
that so few men have when alive and that so few lack when dead. He would
marry such couples as might to marriage be inclined. There were peculiar
customs in Happy Valley, due to the "rider's" long absences, so that
sometimes a baby might without shame be present at the wedding of its
own parents. To be sure, Lum's eyes did swerve once when the preacher
spoke of marriage--swerved from where the women sat to where sat the
men--to young Jake Kilburn, called Devil Jake, a name of which he was
rather proud; for Martha's eyes had swerved to him too, and Jake shot
back a killing glance and began twisting his black mustache.

And then the preacher told about the woman whom folks once stoned.

Lum listened dully and waited helplessly around at the end of the meeting
until he saw Martha and Jake go down the road together, Martha shy and
conscious and Jake the conquering daredevil that he was known to be among
women. Lum went back to his cabin, cooked his dinner, and sat down in his
doorway to whittle and dream.

Lum went to church no more. When Martha passed his shop, the same
"how-dye" passed between them and no more. Twice the circuit-rider
came and went and Martha and Devil Jake did not ask his services.
A man who knew Jake's record in another county started a dark rumor
which final