nothing, though I listened for several minutes with parted lips. They were gone. Everybody was gone. Where? Maybe just to spend the day with a neighbor. I knew this was a rural custom. Hope flared up with a quick rush to welcome this idea. Where were those neighbors? Ah, yes! The Tollers! Celeste had told me of them the first time I had talked with her. She had said they lived over the hill. So over the hill I fared in a bee-line, ignoring the road below which in all probability would conduct me to my destination. It was a hard climb, for the spur rose up rugged and forbidding, but I was growing inured to such things and scarcely noticed the exertion. When I reached the valley upon the other side I came upon the road. Following this for a short distance I discovered a log cabin, set dangerously near the bank of a creek. To one side a huge black kettle was a-boil over a faggot fire, and by it stood a woman stirring with a long stick the clothes she was getting ready for the wash. Children were everywhere, like squirrels in a hickory tree in nutting time. There must have been fourteen, and the oldest was far from grown. At sight of me one gave a shrill little yelp, then there began a mighty scuttling for hiding places. The majority made for the door of the cabin, several found refuge behind convenient trees, while one of the boys shinned up an ash as though in mortal fright. Two or three more dropped over the shelving bank of the stream, and holding to the sod with tenacious, grimy paws, thrust their heads up and watched me with brilliant, dancing eyes. The smallest sought the protection of their mother's bedraggled skirts, which they pulled over their faces, thus stifling in a measure the piercing wails which had marked their progress to her side. The woman turned impatiently at the hubbub, brushed the smoke from her eyes, and peered at me with puckered face. I came boldly toward her. Already I knew she whom I sought was not here, but I had to make my errand known. "I'm looking for--a person," I began, conscious that I was stating my mission very lamely. A look of mingled craft and truculence spread over the seamed, sallow face of the woman. What a pitiful appearance she made! I was assured she was not over thirty, but she seemed nearer fifty. Hipless, flat-breasted, stringy-necked; her hands and wrists red and rough. Her scanty hair was pale straw in color, showed dirt, and was slicked back and screwed into a knot about the size of a walnut on the crown of her head. Her dress was--simply a protection against nakedness. "I 'low yo' 'd better git!" presently exclaimed this mother of many, with painful directness. "Yes," I assented; "I'll git in a minute. Have you seen Lessie this morning? It is she I want!" "Oh!"