house slipped out, holding the door
inhospitably closed at her back.

"Fer ther land's sakes, what brings ye hyar, Sally Turk?" she challenged
in the rasp of hard unreceptiveness, and the visitor replied in a note
of pleading, "I come ter see Will ... I've jest _got_ ter see Will."

The other woman still held the door as she retorted harshly: "All thet
you an' Will hev got ter do kin be done in co'te termorrer, I reckon."

But Sally Turk clutched the arm of Will Turk's wife in fingers that were
tight with the obduracy of despair.

"I've got ter see Will," she pleaded. "Fer God's sake, don't deny me.
Hit's ther only thing I asks of ye now--an' hit's a matter of master
int'rest ter Will es well es me. I'll go down on my knees ef hit'll
pleasure him--but I've _got_ ter see him."

There was something in the colourless monotony of that reiteration which
Lindy Turk, whose teeth were chattering in the icy wind, could not deny.
With a graceless concession she opened the door.

"Come inside, then," she ordered, brusquely. "I'll find out will he see
ye--but I misdoubts hit."

Inside the room the woman who had ridden across the hills sank into a
low, hickory-withed chair by the simmering hearth and hunched there,
faint and wordless. Now that she had arrived, the ordeal before her
loomed big with threat and fright, and Lindy, instead of calling her
husband, stood stolidly with arms akimbo and a merciless glitter of
animosity in her eyes.

"Hit's a right qu'ar an' insolent thing fer ye ter do," she finally
observed, "comin' over hyar thisaway, on ther very eve of Ken Thornton's
trial."

"I've got ter see Will," echoed the strained voice by the hearth, as
though those words were the only ones she knew. "I've got ter see Will."

"When John war murdered over thar--afore yore baby was borned," went on
Lindy as though she were reading from a memorized indictment, "Will stud
ready ter succour an' holp ye every fashion he could. Then hit come ter
light thet 'stid of defendin' ther fame of yore dead husband ye aimed
ter stand by ther man thet slew him. Ye even named yore brat atter his
coldblooded murderer."

The huddled supplicant in the chair straightened painfully out of her
dejection of attitude and her words seemed to come from far away.

"He war my brother," she said, simply.

"Yes, an' John Turk wasn't nothin' but yore husband," flashed back the
scathing retort. "Ye give hit out ter each an' every thet all yore
sympat