Melissa received this exposition of her country's code with wondering, luminous eyes. It had a wild, unreasonable sound which was a sufficient guarantee of its correctness. The doings of authorities were liable to be misty by reason of elevation. The fault lay in her limited vision. "I s'pose the law's right. An' the law said the canon didn't belong to mother. I think that ought to 'a' settled it. I don't see any good in it all,--this talkin' so loud, an' scoldin', an' callin' people names. Do you, Sandy?" "I hain't seen much good come of it," confessed the man reluctantly; "but it's human to talk,--it's human, M'lissy. Some folks find it relievin', an' it don't do any harm." The young girl did not assent. Deep down in her placid, peace-loving nature was the obstinate conviction that it did a great deal of harm. She sat down in the velvety burr-clover, clasping her hands about her knees. "Is Flutterwheel Spring more 'n mother's share o' the canon?" she inquired. "Yes, I think it is. Of course I never measured the water, an' I didn't admit it when Forrester said so; but I'd 'a' resked sayin' it was, if anybody else'd asked me." "Why wouldn't you say so to him?" Lysander laughed, and flipped a pebble toward a gray squirrel, who gave a little rasping, insulted bark, and whisked into his hole in high dudgeon. "Well, because he ain't a-lackin' for information, an' I hain't got none to spare, M'lissy." The young girl rocked herself gently in the clover. "I don't understand it," she said hopelessly. "It looks as if he was tryin' to be fair, an' mother wouldn't let him. I should think she'd be glad, even if he did used to be mean,--an' I can't see as he was any meaner than the law 'lowed him to be. I s'pose the law's right. You went to the war for the law, didn't you, Sandy?" Her companion winced. There was one thing dearer to him than his neutrality in the family feud. "Mebbe I did, M'lissy,--mebbe I did," he answered, with a trifling accession of dignity: "fer the law as I understood it. The law's all right, but it ain't every judge nor every jury that knows what it is; they think they do, but they're liable to be mistaken. Seems to me they're derned liable to be mistaken!" he added, with some asperity. And so the paths that to Melissa's straightforward consciousness seemed so simple and direct ended, one and all, in hopeless confusion. Even Lysander had failed her. The foundations of human knowledge were certainly giving way when Lysander indulged in the mysterious.