Neither of the younger Temses uttered a word. Luther smoked imperturbably, and Julia, as sleek, as lithe, as supple as a panther, bent her beautiful, clear-cut, distinct face above the cards, which she moved with a flexible elasticity that made it seem no labor. Every line about her was sharply drawn; the very plaits of her glossy hair showed their separate strands, over and under and over again, in the coil at the back of her head. Against the dark wall, she had a fixity, a definiteness of effect, like a cameo, in contrast with the somewhat tousled head which Adelicia held back to observe her completed industry. She lifted the mended coat in both hands before her, and contemplated the patch, set on indeed as if it should never come off again, but with what affront to the art of fine needlework! She was not so absorbed, however, as to be unmindful of the disaffected state of feeling in the room below, and she must needs seek to improve it. "We ain't so mighty easy tarrified, nohow," she remarked, suavely addressing the information more directly to Kenniston's pretended fears for their safety. "An' ez ter rocks fallin' an' sech,"--she turned her head askew to better observe the effect of the flagrant patch,--"I hev tuk notice ez trees streck by lightning mostly falls whar thar ain't no house." "'Kase thar be mighty few houses whar the trees be lef'," observed old Tems, whose contradictory faculties were called into play every time she spoke. "Waal, fower hev fell, lightning-streck, sence we-uns hev been a-livin' hyar, an' nare one teched us," she argued. Kenniston caught his breath. "How long have you been living here, colonel?" The secret gibe came back to him with the sudden secret renewal of his hope. "Five year, or thereabout," growled old Tems. "Five year this comin' fall," put in Adelicia, with exactitude. "We-uns lived then nigher sunrise, on the flat o' the mounting, over thar." She nodded with her wealth of bronze curls toward the east to indicate the direction of the locality. "And if you would move then, colonel, why not now?" demanded Kenniston. It seemed as if old Tems would not reply. So deep a scowl had corrugated his face that in its wizard-like aspect not the faintest vestige of his famous ancient beauty remained. "Burnt out," he growled at last. "The fire-scald, ye see," explained Adelicia, turning her oval face upon Kenniston. It had an old-fashioned, even a foreign cast, was his superficial thought, as he gazed up at her in the dusky shadows of the staircase; it reminded him of some antique miniature. But his recognized idea was expressed in the words, echoed in surprise and with a touch of dismay, "The fire-scald!" "Fire war set out in the woods ter burn the bresh; but the wind sprung up, it did, an' the fire tuk the house an' fence an' all. Ye mus' hev noticed the fire-scald over yon?" Once more she nodded her head in intimation of the direction. "Then we-uns moved hyar an' raised this house."