The night was as bland as it was dark. Neither stars nor moon lighted the way of the travelers, but Miles McEvoy’s horses had no need of these celestial bodies to help them keep the road. They knew it, though it swept around Simms’ barn and took the cut-off by Decker’s hill, and plunged straight through Ravenel’s woods. They did not tremble as, climbing and still climbing, it carried them along the edge of a gorge; nor did they quake when their hoofs beat on a resounding bridge, though there were but planks between them and an abyss. Dew-wet branches touched the faces of those who sat in the sagging old wagon, and low-flying bats brushed their hair. Owls hooted, hounds barked, and all the unnamed sad night noises of the mountain reached their ears. Azalea had known such journeys many and many a time in the old days when she had traveled in the caravan with Sisson’s actors, but to Carin and Miss Zillah this plunging ahead up a strange road in the pitch blackness was a new and not altogether pleasant experience. Mr. McEvoy may have guessed at their feelings, for he said after a long silence: “Mr. Summers was for you-all stopping down at Bee Tree for the night. You could ‘a’ put up at Mis’ Casey’s by turning her step-ma out’n her bed. But even then it would have took some studying, for the three of you would have had to bunk together, and that looked to me a leetle like crowding the mourners. So I said to Mis’ McEvoy I’d better haul you right up home and settle you in our spare room.” “That was very good of you,” said Miss Zillah heartily. “It’s a shame that you had to wait so long for the train. I’m afraid Mrs. McEvoy will have cooked supper for us hours ago, and that she’ll be quite discouraged by this time.” “No’m, she won’t,” said McEvoy placidly. “She’s been laying in stores for you-all these two or three days past. All I’m to do is to whoop when we hit Rattlesnake Turn, and she’ll put the kettle to b’iling.” “What,” asked Carin from somewhere down in her throat, “is Rattlesnake Turn, Mr. McEvoy, please?” “’Tain’t nothin’ but a crook in the road, miss. A few rattlers has been kilt there on and off, and the folks like to keep the name. It makes it sound kind of exciting like, and there ain’t so many things to cause excitement hereabouts. We have to make the most of them we’ve got.” He gave a little chuckle, and Carin drew a sigh of relief. “I know,” she said under her breath to Miss Zillah, “that I wouldn’t be afraid of lions. At least, not terribly afraid. I’d be willing to go hunting wild beasts if I had a good rifle, but I certainly do hate snakes.” “Snakes?” murmured Mr. McEvoy pensively. “Snakes don’t like to be rubbed the wrong way. Nuther do folks. Take things easy, I say—snakes included. Go your way and let them go their’n. Of course if they show fight, why, scotch ’em. I seem to understand snakes.”