at
foolishness about Jael and Sisera--and there wasn't any use for
it--after she'd let him run on to them officers all he was goin' to
do--nay, after SHE herself, for he had heard her, had talked to Calvert
about it, she wanted to know NOW if it was best." He looked at the
floor and the ceiling, as if expecting the tongued and grooved planks
to cry out at this crowning enormity.

The cause of it had resumed her sad gaze at the fire. Presently,
without turning her head, she reached up her long, graceful arm, and
clasping her brother's neck, brought his face down in profile with her
own, cheek against cheek, until they looked like the double outlines of
a medallion. Then she said--to the fire:

"Jim, do you think she's pretty?"

"Who?" said Jim, albeit his color had already answered the question.

"You know WHO. Do you like her?"

Jim here vaguely murmured to the fire that he thought her "kinder
nice," and that she dressed mighty purty. "Ye know, Mag," he said with
patronizing effusion, "you oughter get some gownds like hers."

"That wouldn't make me like her," said Maggie gravely.

"I don't know about that," said Jim politely, but with an appalling
hopelessness of tone. After a pause he added slyly, "'Pears to me
SOMEBODY ELSE thought somebody else mighty purty--eh?"

To his discomfiture she did not solicit further information. After a
pause he continued, still more archly:

"Do you like HIM, Mag?"

"I think he's a perfect gentleman," she said calmly.

He turned his eyes quickly from the glowing fire to her face. The
cheek that had been resting against his own was as cool as the night
wind that came through the open door, and the whole face was as fixed
and tranquil as the upper stars.

V.

For a year the tide had ebbed and flowed on the Dedlow Marsh unheeded
before the sealed and sightless windows of the "Kingfisher's Nest."
Since the young birds had flown to Logport, even the Indian caretakers
had abandoned the piled dwelling for their old nomadic haunts in the
"bresh." The high spring tide had again made its annual visit to the
little cemetery of drift-wood, and, as if recognizing another wreck in
the deserted home, had hung a few memorial offerings on the blackened
piles, softly laid a garland of grayish drift before it, and then
sobbed itself out in the salt grass.

From time to time the faint echoes of the Culpeppers' life at Logport
reached the upland, and the few neighbors who had onl