"I'd be proud to come," returned Creed at once. But he spoiled it by adding, "I've got to get acquainted with people all over again, it's so long since I lived here; and looks like I'm not a very good mixer." "Will you sure come?" inquired Judith insistently, as she saw him preparing to depart. "I sure will." "You could stay over night in your own house then--ain't you comin' back, ever, to live there?" "Why, yes, I reckon I might stay there over night, but it's too far from the main road for a justice's office." "Well, if you're going to try to sleep in the house, it ort to be opened up and sunned a little; you better let me have the key now," observed Judith, assuming airs of proprietorship over his inept masculinity. Smiling, he got the key from his pocket and handed it to her. "Help yourself to anything you want for the party, or any other time," he said in mountain fashion. She looked down at that key with the pride of one to whom had been given the freedom of a city. Its possession enabled her to bear it with a fair degree of equanimity when Huldah Spiller, having "jest slung her clothes anyway onto that line," as Judith phrased it to herself, came panting and laughing across the slope between the two houses and called a gay "Howdy!" to the visitor. The lively little red haired flirt professed greatly to desire news of certain persons in Hepzibah, and as Creed was departing sauntered unconcernedly beside him as far as the draw-bars, detaining him in conversation there as long as possible. She had an instinctive knowledge that Judith, looking on, was deeply disturbed. Creed set his justice's office about a hundred yards from Nancy Card's cabin, on the main road that led through the two Turkey Track neighbourhoods out to Rainy Gap and the Far Cove settlement. The little shack was built of the raw yellow boards which the new saw-mill was ripping out of pine trees over on the shoulder of Big Turkey Track above Garyville. Most of the mountain dwellers still preferred log houses, and the lumber was sent down the mountain by means of a little gravity railway, whose car was warped up after each trip by a patient old mule working in a circular treadmill. God knows with what high hopes the planks of that humble shanty were put in place, with what visions sill and window-frame were shaped and joined, Aunt Nancy going out and in at her household tasks calling good counsel over to him; Beezy, the irrepressible, adding shaving curls to her red frazzle; Little Buck, furnished with hammer and tacks, gravely assisting, pounding his fingers only part of the time. Hens were coming off. Old Nancy had a great time with notionate mothers hatching out broods under the floor or in the stable loft, and the plaintive cheep-cheep! of the "weedies" added its note to the chorus of sounds as the children followed them about, now and then catching up a ball of fluff to pet it, undeterred by indignant clucks from the parent.