on a rafter, and with his big
pocket-knife deftly cut some thin slices into a frying-pan on the smoky
stove, and into the hot grease he broke some fresh eggs which he had
purloined from a hen's nest in the stable-loft. He had a loaf of baker's
bread, and he made some coffee of exactly the strength he liked. These
things ready, he took them to the big, empty dining-room, resting the
smoking frying-pan on an inverted plate on the clothless table. He sat
down and ate and drank, but somehow not with his usual relish, for there
was upon him a heavy sense of isolation from his kind. In spite of his
effort to regard his condition in a philosophical light, he found
himself unaccountably depressed. After all his youthful dreams of the
domestic happiness which was to round out his life, it had ended in
this. He could, he knew, go to live on the big plantation his wife had
inherited, but it would be at the cost of the pride of manhood which had
been his mainstay so far. She was acting out the part which had fallen
to her, and what was there to justify him in altering his plans--in
giving up the mode of life which had become a part of himself? Marriage,
such as his had become, through no fault of his own, was an acknowledged
failure.

Lighting his pipe, he blew out the lamp and sought the cooler air of the
front porch. There was something depressing, rather than helpful, in the
profound stillness of the night, the expanse of the star-filled heavens,
the shadowy outlines of the foot-hills of the invisible mountains
beyond. He heard his horses pawing in their stalls, old Wrinkle's pig
grunting in its pen; the chickens roosting in a cherry-tree hard by
chirped and flapped their wings as they jostled one another on the
boughs; all nature seemed normal and at peace save himself. What was
wrong? How could it go on? Where was it to end?

Presently his attention was drawn to a figure advancing along the front
fence to the gate. The latch was lifted; it was opened, and the figure,
with a light, confident tread, began to cross the grass toward him. It
was Dixie Hart, and he rose from his chair and went to the steps, a
throbbing sense of relief upon him.

She laughed softly, with a slight ring of affectation in her voice, as
she paused with her foot on the lowest step. "You must excuse me,
Alfred," she said. "I ought not to have come. I ought to have waited
till to-morrow, but I'm getting to be a regular slave to Joe. He was
worrying over