g something over him. Women
all over the county are lending him money at a low rate, and I showed
him that if this trick of his agin you was published they'd lose faith
in him and make him pay up. He saw his danger and give in. But, my! how
it rankles. It's the first time he was ever whipped to a dead finish."

With the deed in her hand Dixie stood staring at him, her beautiful
mouth twitching with emotion, her great eyes aglow with joy. She started
to speak, but a sob rose within her and she lowered her head to the
rail. The beams of the rising moon fell on her exquisite neck; her
wonderful tresses lay massed on her shoulders.

"Don't--don't cry, Dixie," he said. "I can't bear it." He laid his hand
on her head and let it rest there gently.

Presently she looked up, caught his hand in both of hers and pressed her
lips to it. "You are the sweetest, best, noblest man in the world,
Alfred. I can't thank you. I'll--I'll choke. I'm so--so happy.
Good-night."

He stood at the fence and watched her till she had disappeared in the
cottage, and then, like a man in a delightful, bewildering dream, he
turned his face toward the lights in his own house.

Old Wrinkle was waiting for him at the gate, and he held it open for
him. "Your supper--sech as it is--is on the table waitin' for you," he
said, picking his teeth with a splinter from the fence. "Ma got it ready
for you; I've had mine; I made me some mush out of the yaller corn-meal
Pomp fetched from the mill. Mush-an'-milk, with a dab o' cream an' a
pinch o' salt, is all right to sleep on. We've had a day of it; Hettie
has gone all to flinders, and went to bed at sundown with a crackin'
headache, an' eyes swelled as big as squashes. Her uncle Ben is in
trouble. He sent her a letter fifty pages in duration by one of his
niggers. As well as I can make out betwixt Hettie's spasms her uncle
Ben's fine Baltimore lady has turned him down. Thar seems to be a Yankee
feller in the way. She advanced a hundred reasons fer deciding not to
retire to lonely mountain-life. She's riled up, for one thing, on the
nigger question--says she understands a lady has to go armed to the
teeth just to walk from the well to the back porch, an' that she never
had learned to shoot, nohow. The Yankee feller has more scads than Ben,
an' has bought an estate in New York City which he lays at her feet as
an inducement. Het an' Ben must be slices off the same block, for his
letter was soaked in salt water, a