been by accident," said Millicent, dreamily, still gazing over
the sodden fields.

The suspicion did nothing to diminish his comfort or their cordiality.
The morning dragged by without change in the outer aspects. The noontide
dinner came and went without Roxby's return, for the report of the
washing away of a bridge some miles distant down the river had early
called him out to the scene of the disaster, to verify in his own
interests the rumor, since he had expected to haul his wheat to the
settlement the ensuing day. The afternoon found the desultory talk still
in progress about the fire, the old woman alternately carding cotton
and nodding in her chair in the corner; the dogs eying the stranger,
listening much of the time with the air of children taking instruction,
only occasionally wandering out-of-doors, the floor here and there
bearing the damp imprint of their feet; and Millicent on her knees in
the other corner, the firelight on her bright hair, her delicate cheek,
her quickly glancing eyes, as she deftly moulded bullets.

"Uncle Sim hed ter s'render his shootin'-irons," she explained, "an' he
'ain't got no ca'tridge-loadin' ones lef. So he makes out with his old
muzzle-loadin' rifle that he hed afore the war, an' I moulds his bullets
for him rainy days."

As she held up a moulded ball and dexterously clipped off the surplus
lead, the gesture was so culinary in its delicacy that one of the dogs
in front of the fire extended his head, making a long neck, with a
tentative sniff and a glistening gluttonous eye.

"Ef I swallered enny mo' lead, I wouldn't take it hot, Towse," she said,
holding out the bullet for canine inspection. "'Tain't healthy!"

But the dog, perceiving the nature of the commodity, drew back with a
look of deep reproach, rose precipitately, and with a drooping tail went
out skulkingly into the wet gray day.

"Towse can't abide a bullet," she observed, "nor nuthin' 'bout a gun.
He got shot wunst a-huntin', an' he never furgot it. Jes show him a gun
an' he ain't nowhar ter be seen--like he war cotch up in the clouds."

"Good watch-dog, I suppose," suggested Dundas, striving to enter into
the spirit of her talk.

"Naw; too sp'ilt for a gyard-dog--granny coddled him so whenst he
got shot. He's jest vally'ble fur his conversation, I reckon," she
continued, with a smile in her eyes. "I dun'no' what else, but he _is_
toler'ble good company."

The other dogs pressed about her, the heads of the