When Bradley had once asked Sharpe why he had not built his house in the ravine, the blacksmith had replied: “That until the Lord had appointed his time, he reckoned to keep his head above ground and the foundations thereof.” Howbeit, the ravine, or the “run,” as it was locally known, was Minty's only Saturday afternoon resort for recreation or berries. “It was,” she had explained, “pow'ful soothin', and solitary.” She entered the house--a rude, square building of unpainted boards--containing a sitting-room, a kitchen, and two bedrooms. A glance at these rooms, which were plainly furnished, and whose canvas-colored walls were adorned with gorgeous agricultural implement circulars, patent medicine calendars, with polytinted chromos and cheaply-illuminated Scriptural texts, showed her that a certain neatness and order had been preserved during her absence; and, finding the house empty, she crossed the barren and blackened intervening space between the back door and her father's forge, and entered the open shed. The light was fading from the sky; but the glow of the forge lit up the dusty road before it, and accented the blackness of the rocky ledge beyond. A small curly-headed boy, bearing a singular likeness to a smudged and blackened crayon drawing of Minty, was mechanically blowing the bellows and obviously intent upon something else; while her father--a powerfully built man, with a quaintly dissatisfied expression of countenance--was with equal want of interest mechanically hammering at a horseshoe. Without noticing Minty's advent, he lazily broke into a querulous drawling chant of some vague religious character: “O tur-ren, sinner; tur-ren. For the Lord bids you turn--ah! O tur-ren, sinner; tur-ren. Why will you die?” The musical accent adapted itself to the monotonous fall of the sledge-hammer; and at every repetition of the word “turn” he suited the action to the word by turning the horseshoe with the iron in his left hand. A slight grunt at the end of every stroke, and the simultaneous repetition of “turn” seemed to offer him amusement and relief. Minty, without speaking, crossed the shop, and administered a sound box on her brother's ear. “Take that, and let me ketch you agen layin' low when my back's turned, to put on your store pants.” “The others had fetched away in the laig,” said the boy, opposing a knee and elbow at acute angle to further attack. “You jest get and change 'em,” said Minty. The sudden collapse of the bellows broke in upon the soothing refrain of Mr. Sharpe, and caused him to turn also. “It's Minty,” he said, replacing the horseshoe on the coals, and setting his powerful arms and the sledge on the anvil with an exaggerated expression of weariness. “Yes; it's me,” said Minty, “and Creation knows it's time I DID come, to keep that boy from ruinin' us with his airs and conceits.” “Did ye bring over any o' that fever mixter?”