“I’m going to give you the chance sometime, Mrs. Panther,” said Azalea, laughing softly. “Then you’ll help me the very best you know how; won’t she, Aunt Zillah?” On that they parted. Keefe and Mr. Thompson slept at some distance, guarding the path—though indeed there was no one to guard it against. Aunt Zillah and her girls lay beneath a hemlock tree. Beside them, Paralee watched the slow roll of the stars till far into the night, unable to sleep for the thoughts that beset her. “I couldn’t stay in the house,” she whispered to Azalea. “It made me think of the dark days.” “The dark days?” “Before I went away—when I thought we was forgot by all on the world.” The night was good to them; the wind was low and kind; the dew softer than fairy fingers; the stars softly bright. Even the dawn did not come blazing upon them. In pink and gray, delicately it smiled from the farther hills. True, all night long the whippoorwill teased the air with his foolish song, but all there were too used to the notes of his voice to heed. An hour after sunup, the procession was on its way. Mrs. Panther and Paralee rode the horses which had carried Keefe and Haystack Thompson the day before. In the panniers by their side cackled the excited and displeased chickens, and following them came the equally surprised and disgusted pig, for whom Keefe had constructed a harness by means of which Paralee led him. Last of all came Keefe and Haystack, carrying the paralyzed man in his hammock. The little house looked wretchedly deserted when Paralee had closed its shutters and Keefe nailed up its door. He noticed that Mrs. Panther kept her head turned away from it and he wondered if she had, after all, some strange, irrational love for this grim place, where she had suffered so much, and known such bitter solitude. Well, he reflected, the wrench would soon be over. Ten minutes took them out of sight of the house. They presently were out of the clearing and picking their way along the most terrible road in a country of bad roads. The drag of the sick man’s weight, half-skeleton though he was, was more of a burden than Keefe thought it would be. At the end of the first mile it seemed to him that he could not go on; but oddly enough, the second mile found him getting accustomed to the task. With Haystack Thompson, however, the carrying of this dead weight seemed to be but a small hardship. Though making the best baskets in the country and playing the violin with the touch of wild genius were not occupations to strengthen muscles, still Thompson was capable of great exertion. Keefe, who walked behind him, looked at his great shoulders with envy.