fight Jane Hemingway as long as I live. I know I’m going to do that, for I know she will keep her nose to my trail, and I wouldn’t be human if I didn’t hit back." The lovers had moved on; their voices were growing faint in the shadowy distance. The gray dusk had fallen in almost palpable folds over the landscape. The nearest mountain was lost like the sight of land at sea. She walked on to her cow that was standing bellowing to her calf in the stable-lot. Laying her hand on the animal’s back, Ann said: "I’m not going to milch you to-night, Sooky; I’m going to let your baby have all he wants if it fills him till he can’t walk. I’m going to be better to you—you poor, dumb brute—than I am to Jane Hemingway." Lowering the time-worn and smooth bars, she let the cow in to her young, and then, closing the opening, she went into her kitchen and sat down before the fire and pushed out her water-soaked feet to the flames to dry them. In an iron pot having an ash-covered lid was a piece of corn-pone stamped with the imprint of her fingers, and on some smouldering coals was a skillet containing some curled strips of fried bacon. These things Ann put upon a tin plate, and, holding it in her lap, she began to eat her supper. She was normal and healthy, and therefore her excitement had not subdued her appetite. She ate as with hearty enjoyment, her mind busy with what she had heard and seen. "Ah, old lady!" she chuckled, "you can laugh fit to split your sides when a loud-mouthed preacher talks in public about burning benches, but your laugh is likely to come back in an echo as hollow as a voice from the grave. If this thing ends as I want it to end, I’ll be with you, Jane, as you’ve managed to be with me all these years." Till far in the night Ann sat nursing her new treasure and viewing it in all its possible forms, till, growing drowsy, from a long day of fatigue, she undressed herself, and, putting on a dingy gray night-gown, she crept into her big feather-bed. "It all depends on the girl," was her last reflection before sleep bore her off. "She isn’t a bit stronger than I was at about the same age, and I’ll bet the Chester power isn’t a whit weaker than it was. Well, time will tell." Late in the night she was waked by a strange dream, and, to throw it out of mind, she rose and walked out into the entry and took a drink of water from the gourd. She had dreamed that Virginia had come to her bedraggled and torn, and had cried on her shoulder, and begged her for help and protection. In the dream she had pressed the girl’s tear-wet face against her own and kissed her, and said: "I know what you feel, my child, for I’ve been through it from end to end; but if the whole world turns against you, come here to me and we’ll live together—the young and old of the queerest fate known to womankind."