"Well, the Lord has taken that out of my heart. Do you think--think you could kiss me, Mary Ann?" Milford heard the old woman sob, and he walked out beneath the trees where the leaves were falling. The day grew yellow, and brown, and the stars came out, and still he waited, with the leaves falling slowly in the quiet air. The insects sang, and sitting with his back against a tree, he fell asleep. Something touched him. He looked up with a start, and there stood Mrs. Stuvic, her feather sharp in the moonlight. "Drive me home," she said. On the way home she did not speak, but when the buggy drew up at the gate she said: "If there's a God--and there must be one--I thank him for the tears I've shed this night. Now, you keep still. Turn the pony loose and go home. Don't come into the house. I don't want to see anybody. Keep all my affairs to yourself and you'll make no mistake." CHAPTER XX. THE CUP AND THE SLIP. In a pelting rain a funeral passed along the road, and a man who had no time for such affairs, hastening with his milk-cans to the railway station, caught sight of Mrs. Stuvic's face, pressed against the water-streaked glass of a carriage window. He lashed his team to make up for loss of time in turning aside; he wondered at the mysterious tie that could have drawn her out, not indeed on such a day, but at all, for he knew her to be at enmity's edge with neighbors and frosty to every relative. At the station he met Milford, walking up and down beneath the shed. Milford remembered him, Steve Hardy, the man who had given him a "lift" from the station on the day of his coming into the neighborhood. And to his head-shakings, winks, nods, wise mutterings, the new-comer owed much of his reputation for mystery. "I see your old boss off down the road there goin' to a funeral," said Hardy. "Did you? It's one of the privileges granted by the constitution of the State." "Yes. They don't have to take out license to go to funerals, or I don't guess the old woman would er went. Guess all her boarders have gone, or I don't s'pose she'd found the time. Who's dead?" "Her sister, I believe." "That so? Then I wonder more than ever. Believe I did hear somethin' about it t'uther evenin', but I was milkin' at the time and I didn't think that she was the old woman's sister. They must have made it up." "Made what up?" "Why, the row they had over the line-fence a good while ago. Somebody told me you wanted to buy some calves." "Yes, I'd like to get a few good ones." "Well, mine are as good as ever stood on four feet. I guess you mean to settle here permanently. Well, folks that have stirred around a good bit tell me that there ain't a purtier place on the earth. I've had my house full all summer, and there ain't been a word of complaint. Goin' out my way?" "Not till after the mail comes."