er whar--they plays on 'em in church, quirin' an' hymn chunes an' sech.” Her voice faltered a little; she had never thought to quote this fantasy in her own defence, for she secretly believed that old man Vickers must have been humbugged by some worldly brother skilled in drawing the long bow himself. Nehemiah Yerby seemed specially endowed with a conscience for the guidance of other people, so quick was he to descry and pounce upon their shortcomings. If one's sins are sure to find one out, there is little doubt but that Brother Nehemiah would be on the ground first. “Air you-uns a-settin' under the preachin' o' Brother Peter Vickers?” he demanded in a sepulchral voice. “Naw, naw,” she was glad to reply. “'Twar onderstood ez Brother Vickers wanted a call ter the church in the Cove, bein' ez his relations live hyar-abouts, an' he kem up an' preached a time or two. But he didn't git no call. The brethren 'lowed Brother Vickers war too slack in his idees o' religion. Some said his hell warn't half hot enough. Thar air some powerful sinners in the Cove, an' nuthin' but good live coals an' a liquid blazin' fire air a-goin' ter deter them from the evil o' thar ways. So Brother Vickers went back the road he kem.” She knit off her needle while, with his head still bent forward, Nehemiah Yerby sourly eyed her, feeling himself a loser with Brother Vickers, in that he did not have the reverend man's incumbency as a grievance. “He 'pears ter me ter see mo' pleasure in religion 'n penance, ennyhow,” he observed, bitterly. “An' the Lord knows the bes' of us air sinners.” “An' he laughs loud an' frequent--mightily like a sinner,” she agreed. “An' whenst he prays, he prays loud an' hearty, like he jes expected ter git what he axed fur sure's shootin.' Some o' the breth-erin' sorter taxed him with his sperits, an' he 'lowed he couldn't holp but be cheerful whenst he hed the Lord's word fur it ez all things work tergether fur good. An' he laffed same ez ef they hedn't spoke ter him serious.” “Look at that, now!” exclaimed Nehemiah. “An' that thar man ez good ez dead with the heart-disease.” Laurelia's eyes were suddenly arrested by his keen, pinched, lined face. What there was in it to admonish her she could hardly have said, nor how it served to tutor her innocent craft. “I ain't so sure 'bout Brother Vickers bein' so wrong,” she said, slowly. “He 'lowed ter me ez I hed spent too much o' my life a-sorrowin', 'stiddier a-praisin' the Lord for his mercies.” Her face twitched suddenly; she could not yet look upon her bereavements as mercies. “He 'lowed I would hev been a happier an' a better 'oman ef I hed took the evil ez good from the Lord's hand, fur in his sendin' it's the same. An' I know that air a true word. An' that's what makes me 'low what he said war true 'bout'n that fiddle; that I ought never ter hev pervented the boy from playin' 'round home an' sech, an' 'twarn't no sin but powerful comfortable an' pleasurable ter set roun' of a cold winter night an' hear him play them slow, sweet, dyin'-away chunes--” She dropped her hands, and gazed with the rapt eyes of remembrance through the window at the sunset clouds which, gathering red and purple and gold on the mountain's brow, were reflected roseate and amethyst and amber at the mountain's base on the steely surface of the river. “Brother Vickers 'lowed he never hearn sech in all his life. It brung the tears ter his eyes--it surely did.” “He'd a heap better be weepin' fur them black sheep o' his congregation an' fur Lee-yander's short-comin's, fur ez fur ez I kin hear he air about ez black a sheep ez most pastors want ter wrestle with fur the turnin' away from thar sins. Yes'm, Sister Sudley, that's jes what p'inted out my jewty plain afore my eyes, an' I riz up an' kem ter be instant in a-do-in' of it. 'I'll not leave my own nevy in the tents o' sin,' I sez. 'I hev chil'in o' my own, hearty feeders an' hard on shoe-leather, ter support, but I'll not grudge my brother's son a home.' Yes, Laurely Sudley, I hev kem ter kerry him back with me. Yer jewty ain't been done by him, an' I'll leave him a dweller in the tents o' sin no longer.” His enthusiasm had carried him too far. Lau-relia's face, which at first seemed turning to stone as she gradually apprehended his meaning and his mission, changed from motionless white to a tremulous scarlet while he spoke, and when he ceased she retorted herself as one of the ungodly. “Ye mus' be mighty ambitious ter kerry away a skin full o' broken bones! Jes let Tyler Sudley hear ez ye called his house the tents o' the ungodly, an' that ye kem hyar a-faultin' me, an' tellin' me ez I 'ain't done my jewty ennywhar or ennyhow!” she exclaimed, with a pride which, as a pious saint, she had never expected to feel in her husband's reputation as a high-tempered man and a “mighty handy fighter,” and with implicit reliance upon both endowments in her quarrel. “Only in a speritchual sense, Sister Sudley,” Nehemiah gasped, as he made haste to qualify his asseveration. “I only charge you with havin' sp'iled the boy; ye hev sp'iled him through kindness ter him, an' not _ye_ so much ez Ty. Ty never hed so much ez a dog that would mind him! His dog wouldn't answer call nor whistle 'thout he war so disposed. _I_ never faulted ye, Sister Sudley; 'twar jes Ty I faulted. I know Ty.” He knew, too, that it was safer to call Ty and his doings in question, big and formidable and belligerent though he was, than his meek-mannered, melancholy, forlorn, and diminutive wife. Nehemiah rose up and walked back and forth for a moment with an excited face and a bent back, and a sort of rabbit-like action. “Now, I put it to you, Sister Sudley, air Ty a-makin' that thar boy plough terday?--jes _be-you-ti-ful_ field weather!” Sister Sudley, victorious, having regained her normal position by one single natural impulse of self-assertion, not as a religionist, but as Tyler Sud-ley's wife, and hence entitled to all the show of respect which that fact unaided could command, sat looking at him with a changed face--a face that seemed twenty years younger; it had the expression it wore before it had grown pinched and ascetic and insistently sorrowful; one might guess how she had looked when Tyler Sudley first went up the mountain “a-courtin,” She sought to assume no other stand-point. Here she was intrenched. She shook her head in negation. The affair was none of hers. Ty Sudley could take ample care of it. Nehemiah gave a little skip that might suggest a degree of triumph. “Aha, not ploughin'! But _Ty_ is ploughin', I seen him in the field. An' Lee-yander ain't ploughin'! An' how did I know? Ez I war a-ridin' along through the woods this mornin' I kem acrost a striplin' lad a-walkin' through the undergrowth ez onconsarned ez a killdee an' ez nimble. An' under his chin war a fiddle, an' his head war craned down ter it.” He mimicked the attitude as he stood on the hearth. “He never looked up wunst. Away he walked, light ez a plover, an' _a-ping, pang, ping, pang_,” in a high falsetto, “went that fiddle! I war plumb 'shamed fur the critters in the woods ter view sech idle sinfulness, a ole _owel_, a-blinkin' down out'n a hollow tree, kem ter see what _ping, pang, ping, pang_ meant, an' thar war a rabbit settin' up on two legs in the bresh, an' a few stray razor-back hawgs; I tell ye I war mortified 'fore even sech citizens ez them, an' a lazy, impident-lookin' dog ez followed him.” “How did ye know 'twar Lee-yander?” demanded Mrs. Sudley, recognizing the description perfectly, but after judicial methods requiring strict proof. “Oh-h! by the fambly favor,” protested the gaunt and hard-featured Nehemiah, capably. “I knowed the Yerby eye.” “He hev got his mother's eyes.” Mrs. Sudley had certainly changed her stand-point with a vengeance. “He hev got his mother's _be-you-ti-ful blue_ eyes and her curling, silken brown hair--sorter red; little Yerby in _that_, mebbe; but sech eyes, an' sech lashes, an' sech fine curling hair ez none o' yer fambly ever hed, or ever will.” “Mebbe so. I never seen him more'n a minit. But he might ez well hev a _be-you-ti-ful_ curlin' nose, like the elephint in the show, for all the use he air, or I be afeard air ever likely ter be.” ***** Tyler Sudley's face turned gray, despite his belligerent efficiencies, when his wife, hearing the clank of the ox-yoke as it was flung down in the shed outside, divined the home-coming of the ploughman and his team, and slipped out to the barn with her news. She realized, with a strange enlightenment as to her own mental processes, what angry jealousy the look on his face would have roused in her only so short a time ago--jealousy for the sake of her own children, that any loss, any grief, should be poignant and pierce his heart save for them. Now she was sorry for him; she felt with him. But as he continued silent, and only stared at her dumfounded and piteous, she grew frightened--she knew not of what. “Shucks, Ty!” she exclaimed, catching him by the sleeve with the impluse to rouse him, to awaken him, as it were, to his own old familiar identity; “ye ain't 'feared o' that thar snaggle-toothed skeer-crow in yander; he would be plumb comical ef he didn't look so mean-natured an' sech a hyper-crite.” He gazed at her, his eyes eloquent with pain. “Laurely!” he gasped, “this hyar thing plumb knocks me down; it jes takes the breath o' life out'n me!” She hesitated for a moment. Any anxiety, any trouble, seemed so incongruous with the sweet spring-tide peace in the air, that one did not readily take it home to heart. Hope was in the atmosphere like an essential element; one might call it oxygen or caloric or vitality, according to the tendency of mind and the habit of speech. But the heart knew it, and the pulses beat strongly responsive to it. Faith ruled the world. Some tiny bulbous thing at her feet that had impeded her step caught her attention. It was coming up from the black earth, and the buried darkness, and the chill winter's torpor, with all the impulses of confidence in the light without, and the warmth of the sun, and the fresh showers that were aggregating in the clouds somewhere for its nurture--a blind inanimate thing like that! But Tyler Sudley felt none of it; the blow had fallen upon him, stunning him. He stood silent, looking gropingly into the purple dusk, veined with silver glintings of the moon, as if he sought to view in the future some event which he dreaded, and yet shrank to see. She had rarely played the consoler, so heavily had she and all her griefs leaned on his supporting arm. It was powerless now. She perceived this, all dismayed at the responsibility that had fallen upon her. She made an effort to rally his courage. She had more faith in it than in her own. “'Feard o' _him!_” she exclaimed