With an effort she set aside her own recollections in favor of his. "Oh, yes, I remember. The one whose false teeth were always slipping down." "His picket fence was all torn to pieces one night. He had a way of calling names in the pulpit, the elder had,--children of the devil and that sort of thing--and it got some of the boys riled. And to pay him back, they tore down his fence. Persis, I--I was one of those boys." He looked at her appealingly and felt his heart sink. Persis' eyes were lowered. Her face was grave and a little sad as befits one who has been tendered irrefutable proof of a friend's unworthiness. Thomas gulped. Well, it was only what he had expected all along. A woman like Persis could not be asked to overlook everything. "Good night, Persis," he said huskily, and he thought it more than his deserts when she answered him with her usual kindness, "Good night, Thomas." CHAPTER III A FITTING During the spring and summer Persis rose at half past five, and though she slept little the night following Thomas Hardin's disclosures, she refused to concede to her feeling of weariness so much as an extra half-hour. Her fitful slumbers had been haunted by dreams of apples, apples in barrels, apples in baskets, apples dropping from full boughs and pelting her like hail-stones, for all her dodging. There were feverishly red apples, gnarly green apples and the golden sweets, the favorites of her childhood, all of them turning into goblins as she approached, and leering up at her out of impish eyes which nevertheless bore a startling resemblance to those eyes in whose depths she had once seen only the reflection of her own loyalty. It was small wonder that Persis woke unrefreshed. "I declare," she mused, as she twisted her hair into the unyielding knob, highly in favor among the feminine residents of Clematis as a morning coiffure, "a few more nights like that would set me against apple pie for good and all." But the developments of the day were soon to elbow out of Persis' thoughts the visions of the night. As she stepped out on the porch for a whiff of the invigorating morning air, her eyes fell upon a unique figure coming toward her across the dewy grass. In certain details it gave a realistic presentment of an Indian famine sufferer. In respect to costume, it was reminiscent of a bathing beach in mid-July. "Of all things!" Persis gasped, one hand groping for support, while the other shaded her incredulous and indignant eyes. "Have you taken leave of your senses, Joel Dale?" Her brother ascended the steps, wearing the expression of triumph ordinarily assumed in honor of his great hygienic discoveries. He replied to her question by another: "Persis, what do you s'pose is at the bottom of all human ills?" Persis rallied. "I don't know as I'd undertake to speak for 'em all, but I should say that a good nine-tenths was due to a lack of common sense."