After he had gone out Betsey took up an album and opened it at a collection of tintype pictures. On one of these her eyes rested long and mistily. Then she kissed it, wiped her eyes, and went to bed. Two hours later she heard the front door close and her brother creeping to his room. “Oh, Joel!” she called out. “Come to my door a minute.” His boots made a loud clatter in the dead stillness of the house, as he approached. “Was it all right, brother?” “You bet it was, Betsey!” He stood in the doorway. The darkness hid his face, but there was a note of boundless joy in his tone. “I thought it would be, but I don’t yet understand why she come back so quick.” “She don’t like city folks’ ways,” answered the storekeeper; “an’ then--” “An’ then what?” broke in Betsey, impatiently. “Well, you see, the--the notion seemed to strike both of us when we was travelin’ together, an’--an’ she admitted that she was a leetle grain afeered that ef we didn’t see one another ag’in fer three months that the notion might wear off. Railly, she’s tickled to death, fur now she says she kin give Amos an’ Sally a sensible reason fer wantin’ to git back home.” Betsey was silent so long that Joel began to wonder if she had fallen asleep. Finally she said: “Go to bed now, Joel. She’s the very woman fer you. I hain’t never had no rail happiness in my life sence Jim died, but I want them I love to git all they kin.” JIM TRUNDLE’S CRISIS |They were expecting Jim Trundle at the Cross-Roads that spring morning. His coming had been looked for even more anxiously than that of Sid Wombley, the wag of the “Cove.” Sid himself, when he dragged his long legs into the store, forgot to think of anything amusing to say as he looked the crowd over to see if Jim had preceded him. It was on the end of his tongue to ask if Trundle had come and gone, but for once he said nothing. He seated himself on the head of a soda-keg and began to whittle the edge of the counter. Sid Wombley, quiet, suited the humor of the group better on this occasion than the same voluble individual in his natural element, so no one spoke to him, and all continued to watch the road leading to Trundle’s cabin. The silence and the delay were too much for the patience of Wade Sims, a bold, dashing young man in tight-fitting trousers, sharp-heeled boots, and a sombrero like an unroped tent. He was, as he often expressed it, “afraid o’ nothin’ under a hide,” and if “the boys” had seen fit to give Jim Trundle notification, in the shape of a letter he would shortly receive, that he was a disgrace to the community, he saw no reason for so much secrecy. He wasn’t afraid of the verdict of any jury that could be impaneled in the three counties over which he openly traded horses and secretly disposed of illicit whisky. “I reckon thar’s no doubt about the letter bein’ ready fer ‘im,” he remarked to Alf Carden, who stood in the little pigeon-holed pen of upright palings which was known as “the postoffice.”