It was with none of the complacence of ownership that she contemplated her share in his possessions. She often satirically commented upon them, with a singular absence of any sense of responsibility for them. Although she maintained absolute sway in the household, she deported herself like an alien. The interior was alight with a dull red glow, for the cooking of supper was in progress; and while she waited for the baking of the johnny-cake she sat upon the step of the rickety little porch and looked about her with an idle, casual glance, devoid of any consanguinity with the objects upon which it rested. She was some twenty years of age, perhaps. She had a clear olive complexion, and dark brown hair smoothly drawn away from a broad low forehead. Her eyes were small, dark, and bead-like, and held a laughing twinkle in them. She had a blunt nose, and flexible lips that showed two rows of teeth, large, strong, and white. She was accounted good-looking, and had the neat and orderly appearance common to people of that repute. Her compact and well-rounded figure was tidily bestowed in a blue and white checked cotton dress, and from the “tuckin’-comb” at the back of her head no loose ends of hair escaped. Her husband had esteemed himself singularly fortunate to win such a prize, handicapped as he was in the matrimonial race. He felt himself elderly at thirty-five; he was a widower, poorer than his fellows, and burdened with three children. It was rumored in the Cove that she had married Benjamin Bowles to spite another lover, with whom she had quarreled. It is to be hoped that this unique revenge smote with due force its intended victim, but Mrs. Bowles had times of great depression of spirit, and it may be feared that her chosen retribution had given her a backhanded blow in its recoil. It was with much urbanity that she received the constable, who was her cousin, and who had chanced to be called up into the mountain on official business, and had stopped to spend the night at his relative’s house. She evidently entertained some anxiety that a flattering report of the match she had made, and her content therewith, should go down to the Cove, and for this she exerted her tact. She was smiling and brisk as she served the supper, which was savory enough, for she was a good housewife, bland and kind to her step-children, decorous and deferential to her husband; but her manner to his brother was singularly null, which indication Eli Strobe did not fail to notice. There was antagonism here, and each was strong in a way. “Fight dog, fight bar,” said Eli Strobe, chuckling to himself. It titillated his sense of humor to remember how anxious she had been that Jepson should join his cattle and sheep and household gear to her husband’s stock, when his mother had died, and his home in the valley was thus broken up. It had been a provident and profitable arrangement on her part.