Mrs. Cavanaugh read the letter when it was finished. She made no comment
on it, but her opinion of her husband had never been so high. Deep pools
of his inner being for the first time in his life were exposed to the
light of her understanding.

"May I?" she asked, taking the pen into her hand, and laying his letter
open on the table.

"Yes," he nodded. "Add anything you like."

"Dear John," she wrote on the margin, in the cramped style of one who
writes but seldom, "come to your mother. Do as Sam says. He knows what
is best."

CHAPTER X

Among the farmers of that locality it was considered somewhat beneath
the dignity of the men to milk the cows, but Joel Eperson had never
permitted his little wife to lay her hands to that particularly arduous
part of the day's duties. And to-night at dusk he was at this work in
the stable-yard, Tilly and the children still being at Mrs. Trott's
cabin. He knew why his wife had gone there, and painfully he was
comprehending why she was so late in getting back. There would naturally
be much to say on a subject like that by the two women in all the world
whom such a startling revelation touched so closely. Joel took his pail
of milk into the cabin. He put some more wood into the stove that it
might be hot and ready for use when Tilly arrived, and then he walked to
and fro in the yard, his dull eyes on the dewy fields. On his right, a
half-mile distant, the fires of the lime-kilns and brickyards were
beginning to glow against the cliffs in the coming darkness, and the
songs of the negro stokers and the thwacks of their axes fell on his
ears. He emptied the water in the pail and brought up some more from the
spring at the foot of the slope. Still his family did not come, and he
started out to meet them. He crossed the meadow, skirted his corn, which
till only the other day he had looked on with pride, walked between the
rows of his cotton-plants to curtail the distance, and finally reached
the wood through which ran the path to Mrs. Trott's cabin. As he stood
there for a moment he heard voices. Both Tilly and Mrs. Trott were
speaking, but he could not see them for the thickened darkness beneath
the trees.

"I must hurry now." It was Tilly's voice, and it rang with the lilting
tones of triumphant joy. "It is late. Joel will be looking for me."

"Yes, I'll turn back," Mrs. Trott was heard saying. "Let me kiss them
once more. Oh, I am so wonderfully happy! Really, dear girl, I'