Weeks passed and no letter came from Louise. The Major worried over her until at last he forbade the mention of her name. During the day Mrs. Cranceford was calm and brave, but many a time in the night the Major heard her crying. Every Sunday afternoon Jim Taylor's tread was heard on the porch. To the Major he talked of various things, of the cotton which was nearly all picked, of the weakening or strengthening tendency of the market, but when alone with Mrs. Cranceford his talk began and ended with Louise. But in this he observed the necessity for great care, lest the Major might hear him, and he chose occasions when the old gentleman was in his office or when with Gid he strolled down into the woods. In the broad parlor, in the log part of the house, Jim and Mrs. Cranceford would sit, hours at a time; and never did she show an impatience of his long lapses of silence nor of his monotonous professions of faith in the run-away. And upon taking his leave he would never fail to say: "I believe we'll hear from her to-morrow; I am quite sure of it." In the midst of the worry that followed the young woman's departure, there had been but one mention of the young man's affair with the niece of Wash Sanders. Mrs. Cranceford had spoken to him, not directly, but with gentle allusion, and he had replied with an angry denunciation of such meddlesomeness. "I'm not going to marry a dying woman," he declared; "and I'm not going to take up any faded ninny that you and father may pick out. I'm going to please myself, and when you decide that I mustn't, just say the word and I'll hull out. And I don't want to hear anything about crackers or white trash, either. That's me." His mother must have agreed that it was, for the weeks went by and not again did she drop a hint of her anxiety. One rainy afternoon the Major and old Gid were sitting on a tool-box under the barn shed, when Father Brennon came riding down the road. "As they say over the creek, light and look at your saddle!" the Major shouted. With a nod and a smile the priest rode through the gate, dismounted, gave his horse over to a negro who, in answer to a shout, had come forward from some mysterious precinct of the barn-yard, shook hands with the Major and Gid, and gracefully declining a seat on the tool-box, rolled a barrel from against the wall and upon it seated himself. "More in accordance with the life of a priest," he said, tapping the barrel with his knuckles. "It is rolling." "Ah," replied the Major, "and a barrel may also typify the reckless layman. It is often full." The priest gave to this remark the approval of a courteous laugh. Even though he might stand in a slippery place, how well he knew his ground. To call forth a weak joke and then to commend it with his merriment--how delightful a piece of flattery. And it can, in truth, be said that in his heart he was sincere. To be pleasing was to him an art, and this art was his second nature.