th fair promises that the eye might not seek to measure.
The gorgeous tints were gone, and in their stead were soft grays and
indefinite blurring browns, and every suggestion of silver that metal
can show flashed in variant glitter in the moon. The mountains were
majestically sombre, with a mysterious sense of awe in their great
height There were few stars; only here and there the intense lustre of a
still planet might withstand the annihilating magnificence of the moon.

Its glamour did not disdain the embellishment of humbler objects. As
Rufe Kinnicutt approached a little log cabin nestling in a sheltered
cove he realized that a year had gone by since Renfrow had seen it
first, and that thus it must have appeared when he beheld it. The dew
was bright on the slanting roof, and the shadow of oak trees wavered
over it. The mountain loomed above. The zigzag lines of the rail
fence, the bee-gums all awry ranged against it, the rickety barn and
fowl-house, the gourd vines draping the porch of the dwelling, all had
a glimmer of dew and a picturesque symmetry, while the spinning wheel as
Loralinda sat in the white effulgent glow seemed to revolve with flashes
of light in lieu of spokes, and the thread she drew forth was as silver.
Its murmuring rune was hardly distinguishable from the chant of the
cicada or the long droning in strophe and antistrophe of the waterside
frogs far away, but such was the whir or her absorption that she did not
perceive his approach till his shadow fell athwart the threshold, and
she looked up with a start.

"Ye 'pear powerful busy a-workin' hyar so late in the night," he
exclaimed with a jocose intonation.

She smiled, a trifle abashed; then evidently conscious of the bizarre
suggestions of so much ill-timed industry, she explained, softly
drawling: "Waal, ye know, Granny, she be so harried with her rheumatics
ez she gits along powerful poor with her wheel, an' by night she be
plumb out'n heart an' mad fur true. So arter she goes ter bed I jes'
spins a passel fur her, an' nex' mornin' she 'lows she done a toler'ble
stint o' work an' air consider'ble s'prised ez she war so easy put out."

She laughed a little, but he did not respond. With his sensibilities all
jarred by the perfidious insinuation of Ozias Crann, and his jealousy
all on the alert, he noted and resented the fact that at first her
attention had come back reluctantly to him, and that he, standing before
her, had been for a moment a