At that the girl raised her face and into it swept a sudden flush of anger. She looked challengingly at Newt and her eyes told him that, if she was silent under the shrewish heckling of the woman, she was quite ready to give him battle. But the boy had no intention of insulting her. He did not know that already she was finding herself in that most pathetic of all positions, the status of being just enough educated to be unplaced at home, and too little educated to be placed elsewhere. She had been thrown, by her father's second marriage, under the persecutions of a shrew, a jealous step-sister, and a century-old imbecile. She looked at Newt and reflected that his arrival added a murderer to the group. "Clem's gal" was longing for that different and more wholesome life over there at the college. But Newt had seen the look in her eyes and recognized that she like himself was here among people who offered no friendship. It was a rude bond of sympathy, and though she was "Clem's gal," and, in consequence, of the enemy, he rose to her defense. "I reckon," he remarked sullenly, "she hain't no more tee-totally tickled about yore a-marryin' of a widderer then what you be." The girl's eyes were lifted with an amazed expression from the calico dress upon which she was working, and her face swiftly softened. But Newt, a stranger to tender emotions, and bent on presenting to every man and woman a face of defiance, gave no further sign of sympathy. He went to the bed which had been assigned to him, and threw himself on his back, from which position he lay scowling up at the smoked rafters and resting. Presently, his mother began again her querulous bickering. The conversation was one-sided, and the boy, lying silent in his dark corner, noted that Minerva merely bent her head as one may bend it against the buffeting of gusty wind or rain. But he was himself less long suffering, and so he raised his voice with the dictatorial authority of a man rebuking a quarreling harem. "Mammy," he ordered curtly, "I'm plumb sick an' tired o' heerin' all this-hyar blamed fursin', an' I wants ye ter shet up. If Clem's gal is a willin' ter endure all thet jawin', I hain't." For an hour there was no sound in the cabin except the low, monotonous voice of Newt's sister, crooning an ancient "ballet" that once was sung in Scotland before the Pilgrims landed in the western world. About sunset that afternoon, Newt came upon the Rawlins girl milking near the barn. When she raised her head from the flank of the cow and saw him standing a short distance away, a sudden stream of color came flooding to her cheeks and temples. He had not yet heard her speak a word, but now after stammering a moment she said: "Hit was mighty good of ye, Newt, ter take up fer me. I'm much obliged."