ing, and, without removing his hat, he
demanded curtly, "Whar's Asa at?"

"He ain't come in yit." A suggestion of anxiety sounded through the
voice of Araminta Gregory. It was an apprehension which experience
failed to mitigate. She had married Asa while he stood charged with
homicide. The threat of lurking enemies had shadowed the celebration of
wedding and infare. She had borne his child while he sat in the
prisoner's dock. Now she was weaning it while he went abroad under bond.
One at least knew when the High Court sat, but one could neither gauge
nor calculate the less formal menace that lurked always in the
laurel--so one could only wait and endeavour to remain clear eyed.

It was twilight before the man himself came in, and he slipped so
quietly across the threshold into the uncertain light of the room that
Boone, who sat hunched before the unkindled hearth, did not hear his
entrance. But in the door-frame of the shed kitchen the wife's taut
sense of waiting relaxed in a sigh of relief. Until tomorrow at least
the silent fear was leashed.

An hour later, with the heavy doors protectingly barred, the man and the
boy who considered himself a man took their seats at the rough table in
the lean-to kitchen, but Araminta Gregory did not sit down to meat with
them. She would take her place at table when the lordlier sex had risen
from it, satisfied, since she was only a woman. She did not even know
that the custom whose decree she followed lacked universal sanction,
and, not knowing it, she suffered no discontent.

From the hearth where the woman bent over crane and frying-pan, her face
hot and crimson, the red and yellow light spilled out into the primitive
room, catching, here, the bright colour of drying pepper-pods strung
along the rafters--there the duller glint of the house-holder's rifle
leaning not far from his hand. With the flare, the shadows of the
corners played a wavering hide-and-seek.

Asa ate in abstracted silence, intent upon his side-meat and
"shucky-beans," but the boy, who was ordinarily ravenous, only dallied
with his food and his freckled face wore the set of a preternatural
solemnity.

"Don't ye love these hyar molasses no more, Booney?" inquired Araminta,
to whose mind such an unaccustomed abstinence required explanation, and
the boy started with the shock of a broken revery and shook his head.

"I don't crave no more of 'em," he replied shortly. Once again his
thoughts enveloped him in a