doctor do anything to relieve her?" I asked.

'Niram moved at last from his Indian-like immobility. He looked up under
the brim of his felt hat at the sky-line of the mountain, shimmering
iridescent above us. "He says maybe 'lectricity would help her some. I'm
goin' to git her the batteries and things soon's I git the rubber
bandages paid for."

There was a long silence. My cousin stood up, yawning, and sauntered
away toward the door. "Shall I send Ev'leen Ann out to get the pitcher
and glasses?" he asked in an accent which he evidently thought very
humorously significant.

The strong face under the felt hat turned white, the jaw muscles set
hard, but for all this show of strength there was an instant when the
man's eyes looked out with the sick, helpless revelation of pain they
might have had when 'Niram was a little boy of ten, a third of his
present age, and less than half his present stature. Occasionally it is
horrifying to see how a chance shot rings the bell.

"No, no! Never mind!" I said hastily. "I'll take the tray in when I go."

Without salutation or farewell 'Niram Purdon turned and went back to his
work.

The porch was an enchanted place, walled around with starlit darkness,
visited by wisps of breezes shaking down from their wings the breath of
lilac and syringa, flowering wild grapes, and plowed fields. Down at the
foot of our sloping lawn the little river, still swollen by the melted
snow from the mountains, plunged between its stony banks and shouted its
brave song to the stars.

We three middle-aged people--Paul, his cousin, and I--had disposed our
uncomely, useful, middle-aged bodies in the big wicker chairs and left
them there while our young souls wandered abroad in the sweet, dark
glory of the night. At least Paul and I were doing this, as we sat, hand
in hand, thinking of a May night twenty years before. One never knows
what Horace is thinking of, but apparently he was not in his usual
captious vein, for after a long pause he remarked, "It is a night almost
indecorously inviting to the making of love."

My answer seemed grotesquely out of key with this, but its sequence was
clear in my mind. I got up, saying: "Oh, that reminds me--I must go and
see Ev'leen Ann. I'd forgotten to plan to-morrow's dinner."

"Oh, everlastingly Ev'leen Ann!" mocked Horace from his corner. "Can't
you think of anything but Ev'leen Ann and her affairs?"

I felt my way through the darkness of the house, toward t