The ancient hound thumped twice with a languid tail on the floor; Judith, back in her kitchen, stayed her hand, and stared out at the newcomer with parted lips which the blood forsook; Jephthah's inscrutable black eyes rose to Creed's face and rested there; nothing but that aspect, pale, desolate, ravaged, the strip of plaster running from brow to cheek, marked the difference between this visit and any other. Yet the old house seemed to crouch close, to regard him askance from under lowering eyes, as though through all its timbers ran the message that the enemy was here. "Good morning," he hailed. "Howdy. 'Light--'light and come in," Jephthah adjured him, without rising, "I'm proud to see ye." His own countenance was worn and haggard with sleeplessness and anxiety, but with the mountaineer's dignified reticence he passively ignored the fact, assuming a detached manner of mild jocularity. Creed, under inspection from six pairs of eyes, though there was only one individual visible to him, got from his mule, tethered the animal, and came and seated himself on the porch edge. "Aunt Nancy didn't want me to come over this morning," he began with that directness which always amazed his Turkey Track neighbours and put them all astray as to the man, his real meaning and intentions. "Well, now--didn't she?" inquired the other innocently. "Hit was a fine mornin' for a ride, too, and I 'low ye' had yo' reasons for comin' in this direction--not but what we're proud to see ye on business or on pleasure." "Are any of the boys about?" asked Creed, suddenly looking up. "I don't know adzackly whar the boys is at," compromised Jephthah, soothing his conscience with the fiction that one might be lying in one bed and another in some place to him unknown. "Was there any particular one you wanted to see?" "I was looking for Wade," said Creed briefly, and a silent shock went through one of the men kneeling on the bed inside the log wall, peering through a chink at the visitor. Judith could bear the strain no longer. Torn by diverse emotions, she snatched up a bucket, ran out of the back door and down to the spring. Returning with it, and her composure somewhat repaired, she dipped a cool and dripping gourdful, walked swiftly through the front room and stood abruptly before Creed, presenting it with almost no word of greeting, only the customary, "Would ye have a fresh drink?" "Thank you," said Creed taking the gourd from her hand and lifting his eyes to her face. He needed no prompting now; his own heart spoke very clearly; he knew as he looked at her that she was all the world to him--and that he was utterly lost and cut off from her. Jephthah, on the porch, and those unseen eyes within, watched the two curiously, while Creed drank from the gourd, emptied out what water remained, and returned it to Judith, and she all the while regarded him with a burning gaze, finally bursting out: "What do you want to see Wade about? Is it--is it Huldy?"