She stood silent, in thought. A faint reddish glow came to them from the curtained glass door of the ell sitting room. "Just a little sermon to start us out right--back to work. It _is_ a serious business, you know, Joe--reconstruction! It's a big task. Let's not fall down on it or be trivial--shirk any of the responsibilities. Good-night," she added suddenly, giving her hand. "It's been a glorious day. I'll see you--in the city." They parted, and he could hear her scrape her feet at the edge of the porch. The stars were winking through the branches of the maples and somewhere in the darkness a gutter was keeping up a monotonous dripping. He passed the corner and turned back to the road with the overlapping elms, walking with his hands thrust deep into his pockets, his eyes watching the road. "Humph!" he said after a while, out loud, and then began to whistle softly to himself, shuffling with his feet on the gravel in time to his whistling as he walked. CHAPTER III Joe Hooper was not a handsome man. He was of that type so often seen in the South, tall, gangly, and very dark, with a sallow complexion and a general air of inertness that always misleads the stranger to the type. Insignificant looking, perhaps, but they will be found, on later acquaintance, to be worming themselves into general regard without effort. The law claims many of them and occasionally the raising of stock and the tilling of soil, though usually as proprietors only, it is true. Sometimes they are swept into strange waters where, if they float about long enough, they manage by some inherent mordant capacity to colour the entire complexion to their own. There are exceptions, of course.