The elder woman yearned over the girl with a mother's compassionate tenderness. Both Aunt Cornelia and Pap John looked with a passionate, delighted anticipation to when they would have their own child's baby upon their hearth. It was the more notable marks of this tenderness, of this joyous anticipation, which Sammy had begun to resent--the gifts and the labors showered upon the young wife in relation to her coming importance, which he had barely come short of refusing and repelling. “Whose wife is she, I'd like to know? Looks like I cain't do nothin' for my own woman--a-givin' an' a-givin' to Huldy, like she was some po' white trash, some beggar!” But he had only “sulled,” as his mother called it, never quite able to reach the point he desired of actually flinging the care, the gifts, and the loving labors back in the foster-parents' faces. Pappy Blackshears passed away quietly in the evening; and when he had been made ready for his grave by Cornelia's hands, her anxiety for the little daughter at home would not let her remain longer. “I'm jest 'bleeged to go to Huldy,” she explained to the relatives and neighbors gathered at the old Blackshears place. “I p'intedly dassent to leave her over one night--and not a soul with her but Sammy, and he nothin' but a chile--and not a neighbor within a mild of our place--and sech a night! Pap and me we'll hitch up an' mak' 'as'e back to Huldy. We'll be here to the funeral a Sunday--but I dassent to stay away from Huldy nair another hour now.” And so, at ten o'clock that bitter night, Pap and Aunt Cornelia came hurrying home. As the wagon drove up the mountain trail to the house, the hounds came belling joyously to meet them; but no light gleamed cheerfully from the windows; no door was flung gayly open; no little Huldy cried out her glad greeting. Filled with formless apprehensions, Pap climbed over the wheel, lifted Cornelia down, and dreading they knew not what, the two went,--holding by each other's hand,--opened the door, and entered, shrinking and reluctant. They blew the smouldering coals to a little flame, piled on light-wood till the broad blaze rolled up the chimney, then looked about. No living soul was in any room. Finally Cornelia caught sight of a bit of paper stuck upon the high mantel. She tore it down, and the two read slowly and laboriously together the few lines written in Sammy's hand: “I ain't going to allow my wife to live off any man's charity. I ain't going to be made to look like nothing in the eyes of people any longer. I've taken my wife to my own place, where I can support her myself. I had to borrow your ox-cart and steers to move with, and Huldy made me bring some things she said mother had give her, but I'll pay all this back, and more, for I intend to be independent and not live on any man's bounty. “Respectfully, your son, “SAMUEL” The two old faces, pallid and grief-struck, confronted each other in the shaken radiance of the pine fire.