And thus he settled the woman question, in his own house at least, and repudiated feminine interest and inquisitiveness in his business affairs, and spurned feminine consolation and rebuke as far as he could,--poor Cap'n Lucy! Larrabee had that sense of being ill at ease which always characterizes a stranger whose unhappy privilege it is to assist at a family quarrel. He was divided by the effort to look as if he understood nothing of ill temper in the colloquy, and the doubt as to whether he did not appear to side with one or the other,--to relish Julia's relegation to the spinning-wheel, or to resent Cap'n Lucy's strong measures; or perhaps he might seem lightly scornful of both. He gazed steadily out of the open door, where a great lustrous copper-tinted sky glassed itself in myriads of gleaming copper-tinted ponds made in every depression by the recent rains; between were the purplish-black mountains cut sharply on the horizon. He heard a mocking-bird singing, and what a medley the frogs did pipe! Then rushed out into the midst the whir of Julia's spinning-wheel, which made all other songs of the evening only its incidental burden. She sat near the door, her figure imposed upon those bright hues of sky and water as if she were painted on some lustrous metal. Their reflection was now and again on her hair; she might have seemed surrounded by some glorious aureola. Not that he definitely discerned this. He only felt that she was fairer than all women else, and that the evening gleamed. The bird's song struck some chord in his heart that silently vibrated, and the whir of her wheel was like a hymn of the fireside. He wished that he had never left it for Taft and his gang, and the hope of making money for a home of his own, since his mother's hospitality had well-nigh left him homeless. The thought roused him to a recollection of his errand. "I kem hyar ter git yer advices, Cap'n Lucy," he began. Cap'n Lucy turned upon him a silent but snarling face. He needed all his "advices" for himself. "I ain't got nuthin' ter hide from you-uns," Larrabee continued, after a pause for the expected reply. "Ye know all I do,"--a fleeting recollection of the still came over him,--"that I'm able ter tell," he added; for the idea of betraying the secrets involving Taft and the other moonshiners had never entered his mind. Cap'n Lucy's scornful chin was tossed upward. "We-uns feel toler'ble compliminted," he averred, "ter hev it 'lowed ez we-uns knows _all_ you-uns do, fur that's a heap, ez ye air aimin' ter tell." "I mean--I went ter say, Cap'n Lucy"--Jasper Larrabee's words, in their haste, tripped one over the other, as they sought to set their meaning in better array. "He jes' means, uncle Lucy, ez it ain't no new thing," Adelicia interposed to expound, touched by the anxious contrition of the younger man, who was leaning eagerly forward, his elbow on his knee, toward the elder, and to allay the contrariety of spirit of "uncle Lucy."