"You-all can go on playin' without me," she said in a constrained tone. "I got to see to something in the other room." "See here, Mister Man," remarked Blatch, as Judith prepared to leave. "You're mighty free and permisc'ous makin' rules for kissin' games, but I take notice you don't follow none of 'em yo'se'f." Judith halted uncertainly. To stop and defend Creed was out of the question. She was about to interpose with the general accusation that Blatch was trying to pick a fuss and break up her play-party, when Iley's voice, for once a welcome interruption, broke in from the doorway. "Jude, we ain't got plates enough for everybody an' to put the biscuit on," called Jim Cal's wife. "Ax Creed Bonbright could we borry a few from his house." Judith closed instantly with the diversion. She moved quickly toward the door; Bonbright joined her. "Why yes," he said. "You know I told you to help yourself. Let me go over now and get what you want. Is there anything else?" "That's mighty kind of you, Creed," Judith thanked him. "I reckon I better go along with ye and see. I don't think of anything else just now. Iley, we'll be back quick as we can with all the plates ye need." Together they stepped out into the soft dusk of the summer night, followed by the narrowed gaze of Blatch Turrentine's grey eyes. Chapter VIII On the Doorstone Behind them the play was resumed in the lighted room; the whining of the fiddle, the thud and stamp of many feet, came to them softened and refined by a little distance. They were suddenly drawn together in that intimacy of two who leave the company and the lights on a special expedition. Judith made an impatient mental effort to release the incident of Huldah and the kiss, which had so unreasonably irritated her. "If we was to go acrosst fields hit would be a heap better," she advised softly, and they moved through the odorous, myriad-voiced darkness of the midsummer night, side by side, without speech, for a time. Then as Creed halted at a dim, straggling barrier which crossed their course and laid down a rail fence partially that she might the more easily get over in her white frock, she returned to the tormenting subject once more, opening obliquely: "You and Huldy Spiller is old friends I reckon. Don't you think she's a powerful pretty girl?" "Mighty pretty," echoed Creed absently. All girls were of an even prettiness to him, and Huldah Spiller was a pleasant little thing. He was wondering what he had done back there in the play-room that had set them all against him. "Her and Wade is goin' to be wedded come September," put in Judith jealously. "Yo' cousin will be getting a mighty fine wife." The mountain man is apt to make his comments on the marriages of his friends with dignified formality, and Creed uttered the accustomed phrase without heat or enthusiasm; but it seemed to Judith that he might have said less--or more.