cup to his lips, trembled in the air
and then sank slowly back to the table. His usually dull and indifferent
gaze became suddenly piercing as if it were charged with electricity.

"It's nothing, father," said Blossom, pressing her hand to her bosom,
as though she were choking for breath, "and it's all silly talk, I know,
about Molly."

"What does it matter to you if it's true?" demanded Sarah tartly,
but Blossom, driven from the room by a spasm of coughing, had already
disappeared.

It was a close September night, and as Abel crossed the road to look
for a young heifer in the meadow the heavy scent of the Jamestown
weeds seemed to float downward beneath the oppressive weight of
the atmosphere. The sawing of the katydids came to him out of the
surrounding darkness, through which a light, gliding like a gigantic
glow-worm along the earth, revealed presently the figure of Jonathan
Gay, mounted on horseback and swinging a lantern from his saddle.

"A dark night, Revercomb."

"Yes, there'll be rain before morning."

"Well, it won't do any harm. The country needs it. I'm glad to hear, by
the way, that you are going into politics. You're a capital speaker. I
heard you last summer at Piping Tree."

He rode on, and Abel forgot the meeting until, on his way back from the
meadow, he ran against Blossom, who was coming rather wildly from the
direction in which Jonathan had vanished.

"What has upset you so, Blossom? You are like a ghost. Did you meet Mr.
Jonathan?"

"No, why should I meet Mr. Jonathan? What do you mean?"

Without replying she turned from him and ran into the house, while
following her more soberly, he asked himself carelessly what could have
happened to disturb her. "I wonder if she is frettin' about the rector?"
he thought, and his utter inability to understand, or even to recognize
the contradictions in the nature of women oppressed his mind. "First,
she wanted Mr. Mullen and he didn't want her, then he wanted her and she
didn't want him, and now when he's evidently left off caring again, she
appears to be grievin' herself sick about him. I wonder if it's always
like that--everybody wanting the person that wants somebody else? And
yet I know I loved Molly a hundred times more, if that were possible,
when I believed she cared for me." He remembered the December afternoon
so many years ago, when she had run away from the school in Applegate,
and he had found her breasting a heavy snow storm on the road