“I b’lieve ye!” satirically. “Ennybody but you-uns would be ’shamed ter own up ez ye hev got no home. Old ez ye be, an’ ye ain’t married yit! How old be ye? Lemme see,”—with a tone intimating that she would give no quarter,—“nineteen year, five month, an’ fower days. It’s plumb scandalous,” she muttered, arranging her shawl about her. “Ye Bluff!” addressing the ox in a querulous crescendo, “ye goin’ ter jolt the life out’n me, a-tryin’ ter ape the gait o’ the minchin’ sinners ye seen in Shaftesville! Actially the steer hev got the shuffles! I tell ye, Sodom an’ G’morrah warn’t nowhar fur seethin’ sin ter Shaftesville. The devil be a-gatherin’ his harvest thar. His bin an’ barn air full. Them folks will know some day ez store clothes ain’t no defense agin fire. They hev bartered thar salvation fur store clothes. But I do wisht,” she broke off suddenly, dropping her voice from her sanctimonious whine to her cheery drawl, “I hed one o’ them ready-made sun-bonnets. I hed traded off all my feathers an’ truck for store sugar an’ sech afore I seen ’em. I was so full o’ laff that I couldn’t keep my face straight whenst I viewed the contrivance.” The darkness had fled; the moonlight had failed; the fine, chastened pallor of the interval—the moment’s pause before the dawn—showed the colorless sky, the massive dusky mountains, the stretches of woods below, almost leafless now, the gaunt, tawny fields here and there, the zigzag lines of the rail fences, the red clay road. There were gullies of such depth on either side that the ox, who received so little supervision that he appeared to have the double responsibility of drawing and driving the cart, demonstrated, in keeping out of pitfalls, ampler intellectual capacities than are usually credited to the bovine tribe. But indeed his gifts were recognized. “I ain’t s’prised none ef some day Bluff takes ter talkin’,” his mistress often averred, with her worldly pride in her possessions. The wind freshened; the white frost gleamed; a pale flush, expanding into a suffusion of amber light, irradiated the sky; and the great red wintry sun rose slowly above the purple ranges. They had barely passed through a gap of the mountains and entered Eskaqua Cove, when they saw riding along an intersecting road close to the bank of the river a girl in a yellow homespun dress, with a yellow bonnet on her head, and mounted on a great white mare. She had the slaie of a loom in her hand which she had borrowed of a neighbor, and which served to explain her early errand. Alethea, in her joy, had forgotten Elvira Crosby’s sneers and gibes the night she had brought to the Hollow the raccoon which Mink had given her. All other considerations were dwarfed by the rapturous idea that he was at liberty. Eager to tell the news, she sprang forward. “Elviry!” she cried. The girl drew up her mare and turned about. Alethea ran down the road and caught the bridle. “Elviry,” she reiterated, “Reuben air out o’ jail! He’s free! He’s free!”