The fore-legs of Luther's tilted chair came down to the floor with a thump. With a hand on either knee, and the cinders and burning tobacco dropping from his pipe unheeded to the floor, he sat fixedly staring at his silent sister. To his comprehension she was speaking her mind very unequivocally now. Despite the vaunted feminine quickness, Adelicia heard in it only personal upbraiding, for a certain remorse had made her sensitive on this score, and prone to protest her constraining dutifulness. "I hed uncle Lucy's word agin it!" she exclaimed, with a rising flush and angry bright eyes. Julia slowly shook her head, her eyes, her thoughts, far, far away. "I wouldn't hev keered fur no 'uncle Lucy's' word," she declared iconoclastically. "I reckon, ef the truth war knowed, dad hisself married ter suit his own taste. Leastwise, I ain't never hearn o' no old uncle or aunt or dad, or sech kinfolks, ez ondertook ter make a ch'ice in marryin' fur him." "Waal, sir," Luther interposed, in a tone of shocked propriety, "settin' up hyar an' talkin' by the yard medjure 'bout marryin' an' men-folks, an' I'd bet my best heifer that Jack Espey ain't gin air one o' ye a single thought sence he lef' hyar. No, nor nare 'nother man. Ef the truth war knowed, ye hain't got a haffen chance apiece,--without it air 'Renzo Taft, down yander at the Lost Time mine, an' he can't make out which air the hardest favored 'twixt ye! Ye hed both better go ter work. Jack Espey'll never kem back agin. Dad jes' say he will ter pledjure Ad'licia. An', Julia, ef ye don't spin up that thar truck,"--he pointed with fraternal imperiousness at the wheel,--"ye'll be toler'ble scant o' new clothes, an' ye'll look wuss like a skeercrow 'n ye do now." Julia received this taunt to her beauty with the equanimity of one whose title is unimpugnable; but Adelicia, all unheeding any subtler sense than the obvious meaning his words conveyed, protested against even this conjectural banishment of poor Jack Espey. He would come back, she declared. He had doubtless found out by this time that he was mistaken in supposing the officers cognizant of his true identity, and that they were jesting, thinking him still Larrabee. And now that the nine days' wonder had blown over, and people were interested in it no more, and so much was going on in the Cove to usurp public attention, she looked for him any time just to slip back in his old place. "I never kem out on the porch but I look ter see him in that thar cheer whar Luther be. I hev 'peared ter see him thar." "That ain't the way I 'pear ter see him," said Julia suddenly. "I dreampt he war a-kemin' on his claybank horse, a-lopin' down the road, a-wavin' his big white hat at we-uns like he done that day he kilt the wolf an' fotched home the pelt. That's the way I view him ever sence I dreampt that dream."