ver ther
mountings from Virginny."

She had asked no questions about the paper itself because, to her, the
opening of the trunk was more important, but she heard the old man
explaining, unasked:

"I've done paid off what I owes Bas Rowlett an' thet paper's a full
receipt. I knows right well he's my trusty friend, an' hit's my notion
thet he's got his hopes of bein' even more'n thet ter _you_--but still a
debt sets mighty heavy on me, be hit ter friend or foe, an' hit
pleasures me thet hit's sottled."

The girl passed diplomatically over the allusion to herself and the
elder's expression of favour for a particular suitor, but without words
she had made the mental reservation: "Bas Rowlett's brash and uppety
enough withouten us bein' beholden ter him fer no money debt. Like as
not he'll be more humble-like a'tter this when he comes a-sparkin'."

Now she sat on a heavy cross-beam and looked down upon the packed
contents while into her nostrils crept subtly the odour of old herbs and
spicy defences against moth and mould which had been renewed from time
to time through the lagging decades until her own day.

First, there came out a soft package wrapped in a threadbare shawl and
carefully bound with home-twisted twine and this she deposited on her
knees and began to unfasten with trembling fingers of expectancy. When
she had opened up the thing she rose eagerly and shook out a gown that
was as brittle and sere as a leaf in autumn and that rustled frigidly as
the stiffened folds straightened.

"I'll wager now, hit war a _weddin'_ dress," she exclaimed as she held
it excitedly up to the light and appraised the fineness of the ancient
silk with eyes more accustomed to homespun.

Then came something flat that fell rustling to the floor and spread into
a sheaf of paper bound between home-made covers of cloth, but when the
girl opened the improvised book, with the presentiment that here was
the message out of the past that would explain the rest, she knitted her
brows and sat studying it in perplexed engrossment.

The ink had rusted, in the six score years and more since its
inscribing, to a reddish faintness which shrank dimly and without
contrast into the darkened background, yet difficulties only whetted her
discoverer's appetite, so that when, after an hour, she had studied out
the beginning of the document, she was deep in a world of
romance-freighted history. Here was a journal written by a woman in the
brave and t