“Waal, Watch ain’t got no call ter be like nuthin’ else.” Marcella spoke absently, hardly heeding what she said, only mechanically defending her canine friend. She was leaning back amongst the vines that hung down dry and even a trifle dusty within the rift, and trembled above her head and rested on her shoulder. Her eyes seemed to share the pensive brilliance of the hour, so full of a dreaming light, so softly shadowed by the melancholy droop of the long lashes, they were, as she looked, unseeing, into the illuminated sun set, through the soft falling of the glittering rain. The spirited pose of her delicate head on its slender throat was hardly less marked, in this moment of languor, than when held alert and upright. All her lithe and slender figure was relaxed, as she leaned back in the bower that the vines wove for her, and toyed with a tendril in her hand. Jepson gazed long and silently at her, as she sat there, wondering again that he should never before have seen her. He felt now as if they had often met, and he became sensible of the repetitious impression in a sort of doubting amazement. Her characteristics he seemed to have long ago conned. He was prepared for every turn of her alert head, every sudden uplifting of her definite arrogant eyebrows above those soft eyes. He even felt a fostering familiar regard for the wish nearest her heart, and in the fullness of a warm partisan impulse he abruptly spoke:— “I’ll tell ye right now what’s doin’ Eli mo’ harm with the voters o’ the deestric’ ’n ennythin’ else. It’s this hyar everlastin’ upholdin’ o’ Jake Baintree.” “It’s the law’s upholdin’ Jake Baintree!” said Marcella quickly. The dream-light had fled from her face; she looked at him with a shifting spark deep in her clear eyes, betokening a disquieted spirit and a touch of anger. He changed his attitude, and glanced out over the landscape. “I never expect ter spend my time argufyin’ with enny gal-folks,” he said in an offhand way, and with a laughing sneer. “But ye kin set it down, ef ye air minded ter. Yer dad’s cavortin’ roun’ an’ upholdin’ Jake Baintree, kase this leetle old yearthly jedge down yander didn’t hev sense enough or law enough ter fix his sin on him, air a-goin’ ter defeat Eli,—besides all else folks hev got agin him. Ye mark my words.” “Waal, I dunno but they hed ez soon take the jedge’s say-so ez yourn.” She resembled her father, when she gave herself to argument; the slow, calculating glance that she bent upon Jepson, as she turned her head, was singularly like the look she sometimes mimicked. “I ain’t a-settin’ up my say-so agin the jedge’s,” he responded, quickly. “It’s the fac’s. He can’t git around ’em. An’ Eli can’t git around ’em. An’ the folks in the _dee_stric’ can’t git around ’em. The storm will burst some day, though. The Lord will repay.”