"Did you think I’d marry him? I loved you, Eph’um—you." "Is that the reason you ’re here with my mother?" "Yes; I’ve been with her nearly all the time." "It was my fault the raiders come out to get ’Lishy, that night." "I knew it when I heard how you saved him from them. Oh, don’t hate me for makin’ you suffer so! It seemed like fun then, but I’ve been paid back for it all." He felt dazed. Armindy free, Armindy faithful, and loving, and humbly entreating him not to hate her! Life thrilled afresh through him. "Who did ’Lishy Cole marry?" he inquired at last. "How you keep thinkin’ o’ him!" "I can afford to now." "He married Sary Ann Wood." They were standing by the laurel thicket. She saw that his eyes were fixed on the flowers, and turned quickly away to take up the pail of water. "I ain’t danced the hoe-down since that night." He broke off a spray of the flowers and fastened it in her hair. *S’PHIRY ANN.* The Standneges lived in a little sheltered cove upon the mountain-side, their house only a two-roomed cabin, with an entry separating the rooms, and low, ungainly chimneys at each end. Below it the Cartecay River lay like an amber ribbon in the green, fertile valley; above it towered majestic mountain heights, shrouded in silver mists or veiled in a blue haze. The Standneges were bred-and-born mountaineers, and had drifted into the little cove while Indian camp-fires were still glowing like stars in the valley of the Cartecay, and Indian wigwams dotting the river’s banks. The house had a weather-beaten look, and the noble chestnut-oaks shading it had covered the roof with a fine green mold. The kitchen, a heavy-looking, smoke-blackened structure with a puncheon floor, stood just in the rear of the house, and so situated that from the door one could look through the entry to the front gate and the mountain road beyond. [Illustration: POLLY.] Mrs. Standnege sat in the kitchen door one morning with bottles and bean-bags scattered around her, "sortin’" out seed-beans. She was a woman not much beyond middle age, but lean and yellow, with faded eyes and scant dun-colored hair, time and toil and diet having robbed her of the last remnant of youth, without giving her a lovely old age. She was a good type of the average mountain woman, illiterate but independent, and contented with her scant homespun dress, her house, her beanbags. [Illustration: MRS. STANDNEGE.] A heavy old loom occupied one corner of the kitchen, and Polly, the eldest daughter, sat on the high bench before it, industriously weaving, while S’phiry Ann stood by the smoke-stained mantel, watching the pine she had laid on the fire burst into vivid flame. A bundle of clothes lay at her feet, surmounted by a round flat gourd, filled with brown jelly-like soap.