“Ef you do, you ain’t no Christian woman, that’s all,” was Lucinda’s half-sobbing, half-shrieked accusation. “Yo’ ‘re a purty thing to set up an’ drink the sacrament with a heart in you that the Old Nick’s fire couldn’t melt.” The convict smiled back at his defender from the threshold; then they heard him cross the entry and step down on the gravel walk. He had passed the bars and was turning up the side of a little hill, on the brow of which a few gravestones shimmered in the moonlight, when he heard his name called from the entry. It was Lucinda’s voice; she came to him, her hair flying in the wind. “I ‘lowed,” he said, sheepishly, as she paused to catch her breath, “I jest ‘lowed I’d go up thar an’ see ef the water had been washin’ out round Annie’s grave. The last time I looked at it the foot-rock was a little sagged to one side.” “Come back in the house, Dick,” cried the old maid. “Marty has completely broke down. She’s cryin’ like a baby. She has been actin’ stubborn beca’se she was proud an’ afeerd folks would think she was a fool about you. As soon as I told ’er you didn’t say that about bein’ willin’ to go to jail to git out ’n reach o’ ’er tongue, she axed me to run after you. She’s consented to make it up ef we will send over fer the justice an’ have the marryin’ done to-night.” “Are you a-tellin’ me the truth, Lucinda?” “As the Lord is my witness.” He stared at the farmhouse a moment; then he said: “Well, you an’ her git everything ready, an’ I ’ll git Squire Dow an’ the license. I ’ll be back as soon as I kin.” A RURAL VISITOR I |Lucinda Gibbs stood in the corner of the rail fence behind her cottage. Her face was damp with perspiration, and her heavy iron-gray hair had become disarranged and hung down her back below the skirt of her gingham sun-bonnet. She was raking the decayed leaves and dead weeds from her tender strawberry sprouts and mentally calculating on an abundant crop of the luscious fruit later in the spring. “The trouble is I won’t git to eat none of ‘em,” she sighed, as she looked up and addressed the woman on the other side of the fence. “You don’t mean that you are actually a-goin’ shore ‘nough, Mis’ Gibbs?” exclaimed Betsey Lowry, as she leaned heavily on the top rail. The widow reversed her rake and began to pull out the leaves which were packed between the metal teeth, her face reddening gradually, as if she were slightly irritated. “I’d like to know ef thar’s anything strange about my goin’,” she said, coldly. “You said you’d feed my cat an’ chickens an’ attend to the cow fer what she’d give.”