My guest did not notice that I sat dumb, bewildered, bereft. She was talking. “No, I think, my dear, that if you wish to memorialize a passing folk, you will find material more worthy of your pen in the twilight of the bourgeoisie. They have lived in the main line of evolution, and will leave their touch on the race. Faint it may be, but indelible. In art, in literature, perhaps in certain predilections of character and temperament, it will be possible to trace them. These mountain people will not have even a fossilized survival. They live in a _cul-de-sac_, a pocket of society, so to speak. Your mind has an epic cast, and will never fit into its limits.” There was more; then Serena’s voice glided into the monologue. “Mis’ Dolly, I don’t like to tell you, seein’ you were ailin’ last night, but Johnny Diller went by here this mornin’, an’ he said Mis’ Ludd’s little Marthy wasn’t expected to keep breath in her till sundown.” “I must go,” said I, getting up. “I don’t approve of it,” said my friend. “I must. You don’t understand----” “Please don’t tell me that again, my dear.” “But you don’t!” “Your hat’s on the porch,” said Serena. “You can’t leave to-day, Marie, because I haven’t time to tell you good-by now,” I said, and hurried away. Home again at ten in the evening, I found Serena sitting by a bright kitchen fire humming “Old Time Religion.” “Is Miss Brooks asleep?” I asked. “I reckon she is. She said she was goin’ to take a sleeper.” “She’s gone?” Serena’s affirming nod did not interrupt her tune. “Please stop that humming, Serena, and tell me what you did the minute my back was turned.” “Nothin’ at all. That was the matter, maybe.” “You didn’t do _anything_ for her?” “I fixed her a snack to eat on the train.” “Oh, thank you! It was a nice one, wasn’t it?” “I give her some pickled beets, an’ turnip-kraut, an’ ’tater salad made with that blackberry vinegar.” I dizzily recalled a remark of Len’s. “That blackberry vinegar ’ud pickle a horseshoe.” “Serena,” I began faintly. She had crossed to a shelf and was looking fondly at a jar of strawberry jam. My voice died away; I could not reproach her. Sweets, my friend had called it. And, my God, it was May morning on a mountain-top! IV SAM I He was passing my cabin late at night, and unexpectedly found me sitting on the moonlit doorstep. I was not longing for conversation, but Sam’s voice, as mere sound, was no more interruptive than purling water or a cajoling minor wind. It mellowed its way over uncouth words in a manner that seemed to be its owner’s gentle amends for using anything in your presence so angular and knotty as the language of man. “I thought,” he said, “maybe I could ketch that coon what uses over in Grape Vine Cove; but my dog Buck got onter a fox-trail, an’ coon wasn’t nothin’ to him after that. I knowed that fox ’ud take him to Katter Knob, so I let him go on by hissef an’ I shammucked along toward home.”