once takes up with a heresy,
he shouts a heap louder than them that was born an' baptised in it? It
seems as if they can't desert the ancient ways without defying 'em as
well."

"'Tis so, 'tis so," admitted old Adam, wagging his head, "but Abel
Revercomb was al'ays the sort that could measure nothin' less than a
bushel. The pity with big-natured folk is that they plough up a mountain
and trip at last over a pea-vine!"

From the gloom and brightness of the Applegate road there emerged the
large figure of a young man, who led a handsome grey mare by the halter.
As he moved against the coloured screen of the leaves something of the
beauty of the desolate landscape showed in his face--the look of almost
autumnal sadness that one finds, occasionally, in the eyes of the
imaginative rustic. He wore a pair of sheepskin leggins into which the
ends of his corduroy trousers were stuffed slightly below the knees. His
head was bare, and from the open neck of his blue flannel shirt, faded
from many washings, the muscles in his throat stood out like cords in
the red-brown flesh. From his uncovered dark hair to his heavy boots, he
was powdered with the white dust of his mill, the smell of which floated
to the group under the mulberry tree as he passed up the walk to the
tavern.

"I lay he seed Molly Merryweather comin' up from the low grounds,"
remarked Solomon, when the young man had moved out of earshot.

"Thar's truth spoken for once, if only by accident," retorted old Adam.
"Yonder comes Reuben Merryweather's wagon now, laden with fodder. Is
thar anybody settin' on it, young Adam? My eyes is too po' to make out."

"Molly Merryweather, who else?" responded the younger.

The wagon approached slowly, piled high with fodder and drawn by a pair
of old oxen. In the centre of the load a girl was sitting, with a pink
sunbonnet on her shoulders, and the light wind, which drove in gusts
from the river, blowing the bunch of clustering brown curls on her neck.
She was a small vivid creature, with a sunburned colour and changeable
blue eyes that shone almost green in the sunlight.

"Terr'ble light minded as you can tell to look at her," said Solomon
Hatch, "she's soft enough, so my wife says, where sick folks an'
children an' animals are consarned, but she acts as if men war
born without common feelin's of natur an' didn't come inside the
Commandments. It's beyond me how a kind-hearted woman can be so
unmerciful to an entire sex."

"H