to any
seeming of relenting in her.

She was ready to fight for Parish's life in whatever form the need
came--and she had read in the old Bible how once Judith went to the tent
of Holifernes.

Dorothy shuddered as she recalled the apocryphal picture of the woman
who gave herself to the enemy, and she lay wide-eyed most of that night
as she pondered it.

She would not give herself, of course. The beast's vanity was strong
enough to be content with marking, as he believed, the signs of her
gradual conversion. She would fence with him and provoke him with a
seeming disintegration of purpose. She would dissemble her abhorrence
and aversion, refashioning them first into indulgent toleration, then
into the grudging admission that she had misjudged him. She would
measure her wit against his wit--but she would make Kentucky seem to him
too alluring a place to abandon for Virginia!

When she rose at dawn her hands clenched themselves at her sides. Her
bosom heaved and her face was set to a stern dedication of purpose.

"I'll lead him on an' keep him hyar," she whispered in a voice that she
would hardly have recognized as her own had she been thinking at all of
the sound of voices. "But afore God in Heaven, I'll kill him fer hit
atter-ward!"

So when Rowlett, who had really gone only on a neighbourhood journey,
sauntered idly by the house the next afternoon near sunset, Dorothy was
standing by the stile and he paused tentatively in the road. As though
the conversation of yesterday had not occurred, the man said:

"Howdy, Dorothy," and the girl nodded.

She was not fool enough to overplay her hand, so her greeting was still
disdainful, but when he tarried she did not send him away. It was,
indeed, she who first referred to their previous encounter.

"When I come home yistidday, Bas," she said, "I sot down an' thought of
what ye said ter me an' I couldn't holp laughing."

"Is thet so?" he responded. "Wa'al what seems ridic'lous to one body
sometimes seems right sensible ter another."

"Hit sounded mighty foolish-like ter me," she insisted, then, as if in
after thought, she added, "but I'd hate mightily ter hev ye think I
wasn't willin' ter give ye all ther rope ye wants ter hang yoreself
with. Come on over, Bas, whenever ye've a mind ter. Ef ye kin convert
me, do hit--an' welcome."

There was a shade of challenge in the voice such as might have come from
the lips of a Carmen, and the man's pulses quickened.

Almos