"Won't you be jest dressed to kill an' cripple when you get that on! Don't it set her off, Jeffy Ann?" The village milliner fell back, hands on hips, thin lips screwed up, and regarded the possible purchaser through narrowed eyes of simulated ecstasy. "I don't know," debated the brown beauty, surveying herself in a looking-glass by means of an awkwardly held hand-mirror. "'Pears to me this one's too little. Hit makes me look like I was sent for and couldn't come. But I do love red. I think the red on here is mightly sightly." Instantly the woman of the shop had the hat off the dark young head and in her own hands. "This is a powerful pretty red bow," she assented promptly. "I can take it out just as easy as not, and tack it onto that big hat you like. I believe you're right; and red certainly does go with yo' hair and eyes." Again she gazed with languishing admiration at her customer. And Judith Barrier was well worth it, tall, justly proportioned, deep-bosomed, long-limbed, with the fine hands and feet of the true mountaineer. The thick dusk hair rose up around her brow in a massive, sculptural line; her dark eyes--the large, heavily fringed eyes of a dryad--glowed with the fires of youth, and with a certain lambent shining which was all their own; the stain on her cheeks was deep, answering to the ripe red of the full lips. In point of fact Mrs. Rhody Staggart the milliner considered her a big, coarse country girl, and thought that a pair of stout corsets well pulled in would improve her crude figure; but she dealt out compliments without ceasing as she exchanged the red bow for the blue, and laboriously pinned the headgear upon the bronze-brown coils, admonishing gravely, "Far over to one side, honey--jest the way they're a-wearin' them in New York this minute." The buyer once more studied her mirror, and its dumb honesty told her that she was beautiful. Then she looked about for some human eyes to make the same communication. "What's a-goin' on over yon at the Co't House?" she inquired with languid interest, looking across the open square. "They's a political speakin'," explained the other. "Creed Bonbright he wants to be elected jestice of the peace and go back to the Turkey Tracks and set up a office. Fool boy! You know mighty well an' good they'll run him out o' thar--or kill him, one." Although the girl had herself ridden down from Turkey Track Mountain that morning, and the old Bonbright farm adjoined her own, the news held no interest for her. She wished the gathering might have been something more to her purpose; but she solemnly paid for the hat, and with the cheap finery on her stately young head, which had been more appropriately crowned with a chaplet of vine leaves, moved to the door. She hoped that standing there, waiting for the boys to bring her horse, she might attract some attention by her recently acquired splendour.