l they were all asleep and
hours had passed. None of them doubted that it was Absalom's face that
she had seen at the window, where the light had once lured him before,
and she knew that she had dreamed no dream like this.

*****

It soon became evident that whenever Joe Boyd was intrusted with a
message he would find means to deliver it. For upon him presently
devolved the difficult duties of ambassador. The first time that his
honest square face appeared at the rail fence, and the sound of his
voice roused Evelina as she stood feeding the poultry close by, she
returned his question with a counter-question hard to answer.

"I hev been up the mounting," he said, smiling, as he hooked his arms
over the rail fence. "Abs'-lom he say he wanter know when ye'll git yer
visit out an' kem home."

She leaned her elbow against the ash-hopper, balancing the wooden bowl
of corn-meal batter on its edge and trembling a little; the geese and
chickens and turkeys crowded, a noisy rout, about her feet.

"Joe," she said, irrelevantly, "ye air one o' the few men on this yearth
ez ain't a liar."

He stared at her gravely for a moment, then burst into a forced laugh.
"Ho! ho! I tell a bushel o' 'em a day, Eveliny!" He wagged his head in
an anxious affectation of mirth.

[Illustration: Why'n't ye gin dad them messages 119]

"Why'n't ye gin dad them messages ez Abs'lom gin ye from me?"

Joe received this in blank amaze; then, with sudden comprehension, his
lower jaw dropped. He looked at her with a plea for pity in his eyes.
And yet his ready tact strove to reassert itself.

"I mus' hev furgot 'em," he faltered.

"Did Abs'lom ever gin 'em ter ye?" she persisted.

"_Ef he did_, I mus' hev furgot 'em," he repeated, crestfallen and
hopeless.

She laughed and turned jauntily away, once more throwing the corn-meal
batter to the greedily jostling poultry. "Tell Abs'lom I hev fund him
out," she said. "He can't sot me agin dad no sech way. This be my home,
an' hyar I be goin' ter 'bide."

And so she left the good Joe Boyd hooked on by the elbows to the fence.

The Quimbeys, who had heard this conversation from within, derived from
it no small elation. "She hev gin 'em the go-by fur good," Timothy said,
confidently, to his father, who laughed in triumph, and pulled calmly at
his pipe, and looked ten years younger.

But Steve was surlily anxious. "I'd place heap mo' dependence in Eveliny
ef she didn't hev this hyar way o' cryin' all