her tone, "how be you
going to face this winter? You be as fool-like as dis yere old
hen-hussy. All your chillens was born during respectable times o'
year. What you-all goin' to do wid no wood-pile, no nothin', an' a
baby comin' long in the black time of winter?"

Liza faced her accuser blankly as if she had nothing whatever to do
with the matter.

"I ain't no wise 'sponsible," she faltered; "de good Lord He knows I
ain't hankerin' after no mo' calls and troubles. But the Cup-o'-Water
Lady don' promise to come to me in my hour an' bide till I pass through
my trial. Seems like I can bear it now when I think o' that. Some say
they-all don't believe her is kin to Parson Starr as was, but I does.
The Lord He don't make two sich-like less He uses the same mixin's. I
knows, I do!"

Ivy started back. Oddly enough this was the first time she had heard
the connection between Starr and the newcomer. She had taken for
granted the rumour that had reached her concerning Marcia Lowe, and she
had disapproved keenly of the call that young woman had made upon her
mistress recently, but now, as Liza spoke, sudden recollection startled
her. If the stranger were what Liza suggested, why then Ann Walden's
condition might be accounted for! The surprise of this new thought
turned Ivy giddy, but it also caused her to change the subject of
conversation.

"When yo' come back from de sto'," she said with frigid dignity, "stop
to de' rear do'. I has some corn bread an' bacon what you can carry
'long wid yo', an' an ole ironin' blanket fo' coverin'."

Liza muttered her thanks and shuffled on, her distorted figure casting
a weird shadow as the blazing sun struck across her path as she entered
The Way.

It was five o'clock when the reddish sunlight suddenly was blotted out
by a huge black cloud. An ominous hush came with the shadows, and with
instinctive fear and caution Ann Walden, in the living-room, closed the
windows and doors. Cynthia, who was passing through the hall, ran
upstairs to do the same, and then returned and stood listlessly by her
aunt near the window looking out over the garden place, the little
brook, which divided it from the pasture lot below, and the two cows
huddling under a clump of trees beside the tiny bridge which spanned
the stream.

"I--don't like the look of the sky," Ann Walden murmured; "I reckon
it's going to be a mighty bad storm. Seems like the seasons get
twisted these-er-days. Now if it