Throughout March's changeful emotional season, night after night in those restless vehement impassioned airs, the cedar tree talked ardently to Judith. Through April's softer nights she wakened often to listen to it. It went fondly over its first assurances. And the time of Creed Bonbright's advent was near at hand now. Thought of it made light her step as she went about her work. "Don't you never marry a lazy man, Jude." The wife of Jim Cal Turrentine halted on the doorstep, a coarse white cup containing the coffee she had come to borrow poised in her hand as she turned to harangue the girl in the kitchen. "I ain't aimin' to wed no man. Huh, I say marry! I'm not studyin' about marryin'," promptly responded Judith in the mountain girl's unfailing formula; but she coloured high, and bent, pot-hooks in hand, to the great hearth to shift the clumsy Dutch oven that contained her bread. "That's what gals allers says," commented Iley Turrentine discontentedly. "Huldy's forever singin' that tune. But let a good-lookin' feller come in reach and I 'low any of you will change the note. Huldy's took her foot in her hand and put out--left me with the whole wash to do, and Jim Cal in the bed declarin' he's got a misery in his back. Don't you never wed a lazy man." "Whar's Huldy gone?" inquired Judith, sauntering to the door and looking out on the glad beauty of the April morning with fond brooding eyes. The grotesque bow-legged pot-hooks dangled idly in her fingers. "Over to Nancy Cyard's to git her littlest spinnin' wheel--so she _said_. I took notice that she had a need for that wheel as soon as ever she hearn tell that Creed Bonbright was up from Hepzibah stayin' at the Cyards's." Had not Iley been so engrossed with her own grievances, the sudden heat of the look Judith turned upon her must have enlightened her. "Huldy knowed him right well when she was waitin' on table at Miz. Huffaker's boarding-house down at Hepzibah," the woman went on. "I ain't got no use for these here fellers that's around tendin' to the whole world's business--they' own chil'en is mighty apt to go hongry. But thar, what does a gal think of that by the side o' curly hair and soft-spoken ways?" For Judith Barrier at once all the light was gone out of the spring morning. The bird in the Rose of Sharon bush that she had taken for a thrush--why, the thing cawed like a crow. She could have struck her visitor. And then, with an uncertain impulse of gratitude, she was glad to be told anything about Creed, to be informed that others knew his hair was yellow and curly. "Gone?" sounded old Jephthah's deep tones from within, as Mrs. Jim Cal made her reluctant way back to a sick husband and a house full of work and babies. "Lord, to think of a woman havin' the keen tongue that Iley's got, and her husband keepin' fat on it!" "Uncle Jep," inquired Judith abruptly, "did you know Creed Bonbright was at Nancy Card's--stayin' there, I mean?"