"Do you think that's true--oh, Uncle Jep, do you reckon he didn't mean it?" was all she said. "I don't see as it makes any differ," retorted her uncle, testily. "Marryin' Huldy Spiller ain't no hangin' matter--but hit'll cost that boy his life ef you fuss with him and git him excited and all worked up." Judith turned and felt her way blindly up the steep little stair to her own room. That night she prayed, not in a formulated fashion, but to some vague, over-brooding goodness that she hoped would save her from cruelty to him she loved. The next morning Creed was plainly set back in his progress toward sound rationality, though there seemed little physical change. He recognised no one, and was much as he had been on those first days. While this condition of affairs held, and it lasted nearly a week, there was no need for Jephthah to repeat his caution. But one morning when Judith went in to relieve her uncle, Creed smiled at her again with eyes that knew. As soon as they were alone together, he asked her to come and sit by him, and told her with tolerable clearness how he had followed Blatch Turrentine onto the train at Garyville, how he had fainted there, and only recovered consciousness when they were halfway to the next station. "I was too bad off for them to leave me anywhere, and they carried me plumb to Atlanta. I was in the hospital there a long while. Looks like I might have written to you--but I thought the best I could do was to let you alone--I'd made you trouble enough," he ended with a wistful, half-hopeful glance at her face. Judith, taught by bitter experience, tried to meet this with the gentle, reassuring cheerfulness of the nurse. It was all right. He mustn't talk too much. He was here now. They didn't need any letter. But strive as she might she could not keep out of her voice a certain alien tone; and afterward the bitter thought dogged her that he had told her nothing definite. She knew nothing, after all, about his relations with Huldah; the girl might even, as Blatch declared, have been on the train, and gone to Atlanta with him, and he have held back this information. Perhaps, considering her temperament, Judith did as well as could have been expected in the three days that followed--days in which Creed seemed to make fair physical gain, but to grow worse and worse mentally. Never once did she put into words the query that ate into her very soul, quite innocent of the fact that it spoke in every tone of her voice, in every movement of her head or hand, and kept the ailing mind to which she ministered at tremble with the strain to answer. On the fourth day, fretted past endurance by the situation, Judith permitted herself some oblique hints and suggestions, on the heels of which she left to prepare his breakfast. Returning to the sick-room with the bowl of broth, she met the strange, unexpected, unsolicited reply to all these withheld demands. Creed greeted her with a half-terrified smile.