old grandfather, enjoying the contretemps and
the sentiment of revolt against Meddlesome's iron rule. "Everything
belongs ter Meddlesome one way or another, 'ca'se she jes makes it
hern. So take keer of _yer_ feet for _her_ sake." He turned toward her
jocosely as the small emissary disappeared among the undergrowth. "I jes
been tellin' these hunter-men, Meddy, 'bout how ye sets yerself even
ter meddle with other folkses' mourning--what they got through with a
hunderd year' ago--tormentatin' 'bout that thar man what war starved in
the tree."

She heard him, doubtless, for a rising flush betokened her deprecation
of this ridicule in the presence of these strangers. But it was rather
that she remembered his words afterward than heeded them now. It would
seem that certain incidents, insignificant in themselves, are the pivots
on which turns the scheme of fate. She could not imagine that upon her
action in the next few seconds depended grave potentialities in more
lives than one. On the contrary, her deliberations were of a trivial
subject, even ludicrous in any other estimation than her own.

Sol was small, she argued within herself, the jug was large and sticky.
He might be tempted to lighten it, for Sol had saccharine predilections,
and the helpless Jug was at his mercy. Sol had scant judgment and one
suit of clothes available; the other, sopping wet from the wash, now
swayed in the process of drying on an elder-bush in the dooryard. Should
his integrity succumb, and the jug tilt too far, the stream of sorghum
might inundate his raiment, and the catastrophe would place him beyond
the pale of polite society. The seclusion of bed would be the only place
for Sol till such time as the elder-bush should bear the fruit of dry
clothes.

"Poor Sol!" she exclaimed, her prophetic sympathy bridging the chasm
between possibility and accomplished fact. "I'll fetch the jug myself.
I'll take the short cut an' head him."

Thus she set her feet in the path of her future. It led her into dense,
tangled woods, clambering over outcropping ledges and boulders. By the
flare of the west she guided her progress straight to the east till she
reached the banks of Headlong Creek on its tumultuous course down the
mountainside. In her hasty enterprise she had not counted on crossing
it, but Meddlesome rarely turned back. She was strong and active, and
after a moment's hesitation, she was springing from one to another of
the great, half-submerged