, and called out to him,
"How's the wife?"

"She hain't not to say right smart, an' the baby don't act like he's
well, neither, suh. Ride on to th' house an' light. She's thar, an' I'll
be up d'rectly."

Thryng rode on and dismounted, tying his horse to a sapling near the
door. The place was an old one. A rose vine, very ancient, covered the
small porch and the black, old, moss-grown roof. The small green foliage
had come out all over it in the week since he was last there. The glazed
windows were open, and white homespun curtains were swaying in the light
breeze. A small fire blazed on the hearth, and before it, in a
huge-splint-bottomed rocking-chair, the pale young mother reclined
languidly, wrapped in a patchwork quilt. The hearth was swept and all
was neat, but very bare.

Close to the black fireplace on a low chair, with the month-old baby on
her knees, sat Cassandra. She was warming something at the fire, which
she reached over to stir now and then, while the red light played
brightly over her sweet, grave face. Very intent she was, and lovely to
see. She wore a creamy white homespun gown, coarse in texture, such as
she had begun to wear about the house since the warm days had come.
Thryng had seen her in such a dress but once before, and he liked it.
With one arm guarding the little bundle in her lap, dividing her
attention between it and the porridge she was making, she sat, a living
embodiment of David's vision, silhouetted against and haloed by the red
fire, softened by the blue, obscuring smoke-wreaths that slowly circled
in great rings and then swept up the wide, overarching chimney.

He heard her low voice speaking, and his heart leaped toward her as he
stood an instant, unheeded by them, ere he rapped lightly. They both
turned with a slight start. Cassandra rose, holding the sleeping babe in
the hollow of her arm, and set a chair for him before the fire. Then
she laid the child carefully in the mother's arms, and removed the
porridge from the fire.

"Shall I call Hoke?" she asked, moving toward the door.

David did not want her to leave them, loving the sight of her. "Don't
go. I saw him as I came along," he said.

But she went on, and sat herself on a seat under a huge locust tree.
Tardiest of all the trees, it had not yet leaved out. Later it would be
covered with a wealth of sweet white blossoms swarming with honey-bees,
and the air all about it would be filled with its lavish fragrance and
th