"I reckon in here will be the best place," murmured Cliantha, seeking a candlestick from the mantel for their light. "We could set around this table." "It's more better ef we-all set on the flo'," reminded Pendrilla doubtfully. "Don't ye ricollect? all the dumb suppers we ever hearn tell of was held thataway. Set on the flo' and put yo' bread and salt on the flo' in front of you." "Mebbe that's becaze they was held in desarted houses, and most generally desarted houses don't have no tables nor chairs in 'em," Cliantha speculated. From the moment the lantern revealed the room to them, Judith had stood drawn back against the wall curiously rigid, her hand at her lip, her over-bright eyes going swiftly from one remembered object to another. This fleeting gaze fixed itself at last on the inner door. "I'll go in the other room a minute for--for something," she whispered finally. "You gals set here. I'll be right back. I've got two candles." She lighted the second candle, left the girls arranging the dumb supper, and stole, as though some one had called her, into that room which she had made ready for Creed's occupancy on the night of the play-party. It had reverted to its former estate of dust and neglect. She looked about her with blank, desolate eyes which finally found upon the bed a withered brown something that held her gaze as she crept toward it--the wreath of red roses! There it was, the pitiful little lure she had put forward to Love, the garland she had set in place to show Creed how fine a housewife she was, how grandly she would keep his home for him. The brave red roses, the bold laughing red roses, their crimson challenge was shrivelled to darkened shreds, each golden heart was a pinch of black dust; only the thorny stems remained to show what queen of blossoms had been there. She knelt beside the bed, and when the Lusk girls, frightened at her long absence, crept timidly in to look for her, they found her strangling passionate sobs in its white covering. "It's most twelve o'clock, Jude," whimpered Cliantha. "Hit's come on to rain," supplied Pendrilla piteously, and a gusty spatter on the small-paned window confirmed her words, as the three girls went back into the room where the candle stood in the middle of the floor with the three portions of bread and salt about it. The pale little sisters glanced at each other, and then at Judith, wistfully, timorously, almost more in terror of her than of their anomalous situation, this new, unknown Judith who scarce answered when she was spoken to, who continually failed them, who looked so strangely about her and wept so much.