She smiled encouragingly upon the suppliant for advice; her own face was all unmarred by the perception that matters had gone much amiss with the processioning of the land, for uncle Lucy was a man often difficult to please, and sometimes only a crumple in his rose leaf was enough to make him condemn the queen of flowers as a mere vegetable, much overrated. The girl's aspect was all the brighter as she wore a saffron-tinted calico blouse and apron with her brown homespun skirt, and she seemed, with her lighted gray eyes, her fair, colorless face, and her ruddy auburn hair, a property of the genial firelight, flickering and flaring on the bright spot of color which she made in the brown shadows where she sat and pared the red apples. She reverted in a moment to that proclivity to argue with Cap'n Lucy which was so marked in their conversation. "An' who is the young men ter depend on in thar troubles, uncle Lucy, ef not the old ones?" she demanded. "On the young gals, 'pears like," promptly retorted "uncle Lucy," pertinently and perversely. Then he caught himself suddenly. In the impossibility, under the circumstances, to concentrate his mind exclusively on his own affairs, his interest in correlated matters was reasserted. It occurred to him that it behooved him to foster any predilection that Adelicia might show for any personable man other than the fugitive Espey. He could see naught but perplexity and complication of many sorts to ensue for himself and his household should Espey return; and although Cap'n Lucy selfishly hoped and believed that this was, in the nature of things, impossible, still he had reluctantly learned by bitter experience the fallibility of his own judgment. It seemed to him a flagrant instance of inconstancy on Adelicia's part, but Cap'n Lucy gave that no heed. Few men truly resent a woman's cruelty to another man. Adelicia might have brought all the youth in the county to despair, for all hard-hearted Cap'n Lucy would have cared. And thus her appeal for Jasper Larrabee was not altogether disregarded. "Goin' ter set thar an' chaw on it _all_ day, Jasper?" he demanded acridly. "Whyn't ye spit it out?" "Why," said Larrabee, "it's 'bout this hyar Jack Espey." The apple dropped from Adelicia's hand, and rolled unheeded across the hearth; the spinning-wheel was suddenly silent, and Julia, all glorified in the deeply yellow glare about her, sat holding it still with one hand on its rim. Cap'n Lucy's head was canted to one side, as if he were prepared to deliberate impartially on some difficult proposition. "This Jack Espey,--I met up with him at the cross-roads store, an' struck up a likin' fur him, an' brung him home an' tuk him in, an' he hev been thar with me fur months an' months--an'--an' he never tole me ez he hed enny cause ter shirk the law." "He war 'feared ter, I reckon, Jasper," said Adelicia.