herself great freedom of speech--that you can't make a silk purse
out of a sow's ear. It displeased her that he should come to
Hyndsville. She thought it showed a malignant nature and a peculiar
shamelessness that he chose to reside next door to Hynds House, from
which his great-great-grandfather had been so ignominously driven.
Her first meeting with the young man bred in her an ineradicable
dislike."

Now what really happened is this: The fences having been neglected,
and in consequence fallen down, and the hedge broken in many places,
Mr. Jelnik, just come to Hyndsville, thoughtlessly and perhaps
ignorantly crossed the sacred Scarlett boundaries. Up-stairs behind
her blind, like an ancient spider in her web, the old lady spied
him. She flung open the window and leaned out.

"Who are you that prowl about other peoples' yards like a thievish
cat?" she demanded peremptorily.

The young man looked up, uncovering his beautiful head.

"I am Nicholas Jelnik. And I pray your pardon, Madame: I did not
mean to intrude," and he made as if to go.

"Jelnik!" said she, in a hoarse and croaking voice. "Jelnik! Aha! I
know your breed! I smell the blood in you--bad blood! rotten bad
blood! You've a bad face, young man: a scoundrelly face, the face of
a fellow whose grandfather robbed his house and shamed his name! And
why have you come near Hynds House, at this hour of the day? He, he,
he! _I_ know, _I_ know!"

Lost in astonishment, Jelnik remained staring up at her. The
apparition of this venerable vixen, who had hated Richard's son and
now hated him of a later generation, who had seen those that had
talked to Richard himself in his ill-fated lifetime, so stirred his
imagination that it deprived him of utterance. All he could do was
to stand still and stare and stare and stare. He had never seen
anybody so old--she was nearly a hundred, and looked a thousand--and
he stared at the old, old, wrinkled, yellow face, the unhuman face,
in which the beady black eyes burned with wicked fire; at the nearly
bald head, thinly covered with a floating wisp or so of wool-like
white hair; at the claw-like, shriveled, yellow hands, the stringy
neck, the whole sexless meager wreck of what had been a woman. It
was a stare made up of wonder, and instinctive dislike, and human
pity, and young disgust. She raised her voice:

"Did you not see those signs? Scoundrel, puppy, foreign-born poacher,
didn't you see my sign-boards?" And as she looked d