Produced by Eric Eldred, Clay Massei and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team THE DESERT AND THE SOWN By Mary Hallock Foote CONTENTS I. A COUNCIL OF THE ELDERS II. INTRODUCING A SON-IN-LAW III. THE INITIAL LOVE IV. “A MAN THAT HAD A WELL IN HIS OWN COURT” V. DISINHERITED VI. AN APPEAL TO NATURE VII. MARKING TIME VIII. A HUNTER'S DIARY IX. THE POWER OF WEAKNESS X. THE WHITE PERIL XI. A SEARCHING OF HEARTS XII. THE BLOOD-WITE XIII. CURTAIN XIV. KIND INQUIRIES XV. A BRIDEGROOM OF SNOW XVI. THE NATURE OF AN OATH XVII. THE HIDDEN TRAIL XVIII.THE STAR IN THE EAST XIX. PILGRIMS AND STRANGERS XX. A STATION IN THE DESERT XXI. INJURIOUS REPORTS CONCERNING AN OLD HOUSE XXII. THE CASE STRIKES IN XXIII.RESTIVENESS XXIV. INDIAN SUMMER XXV. THE FELL FROST XXVI. PEACE TO THIS HOUSE I A COUNCIL OF THE ELDERS It was an evening of sudden mildness following a dry October gale. The colonel had miscalculated the temperature by one log--only one, he declared, but that had proved a pitchy one, and the chimney bellowed with flame. From end to end the room was alight with it, as if the stored-up energies of a whole pine-tree had been sacrificed in the consumption of that four-foot stick. The young persons of the house had escaped, laughing, into the fresh night air, but the colonel was hemmed in on every side; deserted by his daughter, mocked by the work of his own hands, and torn between the duties of a host and the host's helpless craving for his after-dinner cigar. Across the hearth, filling with her silks all the visible room in his own favorite settle corner, sat the one woman on earth it most behooved him to be civil to,--the future mother-in-law of his only child. That Moya was a willing, nay, a reckless hostage, did not lessen her father's awe of the situation. Mrs. Bogardus, according to her wont at this hour, was composedly doing nothing. The colonel could not make his retreat under cover of her real or feigned absorption in any of the small scattering pursuits which distract the female mind. When she read she read--she never “looked at books.” When she sewed she sewed--presumably, but no one ever saw her do it. Her mind was economic and practical, and she saved it whole, like many men of force, for whatever she deemed her best paying sphere of action. It was a silence that crackled with heat! The colonel, wrathfully perspiring in the glow of that impenitent stick, frowned at it like an inquisitor. Presently Mrs. Bogardus looked up, and her expression softened as she saw the energetic despair upon his face. “Colonel, don't you always smoke after dinner?”