said little; his mother would busy herself in brewing his "yerb" tea,
and his brother would offer to saddle the mare if he felt that he could
ride, and they would all be very friendly together; and his alien wife
would presently slip out unnoticed into the "gyarden spot," where the
rows of vegetables grew as they did in the Cove, turning upon her the
same neighborly looks they wore of yore, and showing not a strange leaf
among them. The sunshine wrapped itself in its old fine gilded gossamer
haze and drowsed upon the verdant slopes; the green jewelled "Juny-bugs"
whirred in the soft air; the mould was as richly brown as in Joel
Quimbey's own enclosure; the flag-lilies bloomed beside the onion bed;
and the woolly green leaves of the sage wore their old delicate tint and
gave out a familiar odor.

Among this quaint company of the garden borders she spent much of her
time, now hoeing in a desultory fashion, now leaning on the long handle
of the implement and looking away upon the far reaches of the purple
mountains. As they stretched to vague distances they became blue, and
farther on the great azure domes merged into a still more tender hue,
and this in turn melted into a soft indeterminate tint that embellished
the faint horizon. Her dreaming eyes would grow bright and wistful; her
rich brown curling hair, set free by the yellow sun-bonnet that slipped
off her head and upon her shoulders, would airily float backward in the
wind; there was a lithe grace in the slender figure, albeit clad in a
yellow homespun of a deep dye, and the faded purplish neckerchief
was caught about a throat fairer even than the fair face, which was
delicately flushed. Absalom's mother, standing beside Peter, the eldest
son, in the doorway, watched her long one day.

"It all kem about from that thar bran dance," said Peter, a homely man,
with a sterling, narrow-minded wife and an ascetic sense of religion.
"Thar Satan waits, an' he gits nimbler every time ye shake yer foot. The
fiddler gin out the figger ter change partners, an' this hyar gal war
dancin' opposite Abs'lom, ez hed never looked nigh her till that day.
The gal didn't know _what_ ter do; she jes' stood still; but Abs'lom he
jes' danced up ter her ez keerless an' gay ez he always war, jes' like
she war ennybody else, an' when he held out his han' she gin him hern,
all a-trembly, an' lookin' up at him, plumb skeered ter death, her eyes
all wide an' sorter wishful, like some wild thing t