Presently—once more an abrupt pause. “Marcelly?” again with a poignant uncertainty and interrogation. And again “Hyar me,” in dulcet, reassuring tones. She could even conjure a smile into her pale face and a glancing lustre into her distended eyes, while he looked unsteadily and doubtfully at her. But when he began to plod on once more, the blood dripping from the cut in his head down upon his dust-grimed clothes, muttering now and again “Marcelly?” as if this were some cabalistic phrase, hard to grasp, and when once lost never to be found again, a vague terror overspread her features and shone in her wild and excited eyes. Once or twice she turned, and looked an appealing, piteous inquiry at the men who walked beside her, a blank, dull surprise on their faces. When Isabel, who had followed her sister more slowly because of the obstacles the sharp stones and briers furnished her bare, sunburnt feet, joined them, he stretched out his hand gropingly, and laid it on her head. “Ye air—Is’bel!” he declared, with an evident effort of recognition. “Laws-a-massy, yes,” retorted the pert maiden. “I wouldn’t be nobody else fur nuthin’.” He kept his hand on her head as she walked beside him, albeit she remonstrated that he pulled her scalp backward; and as he went he muttered, “Marcelly—Is’bel,” and again, “Marcelly—Is’bel.” It seemed a long time before they reached the bars of the fence, and went down the broad turn-row of the field, through the green and glistening Indian corn, to the door-yard of the little cabin. One might feel in these unshaded and loamy slopes the full richness of the expending spirit of the summer sun, the responsive climaxing ripeness of the herbage of the earth. So broad, so glossy, were the great leaves; so full of vigor and grace, so definite and erect, the tall and stalwart stalks! And how somnolently melodious, how charged with languorous post-meridian sentiment, was the song of the cicada that issued forth! A lizard, swift and noiseless, slipped across the path, his fine yet dull colors showing in the light. The shadows of the chestnut-tree at the gate seemed black with all this yellow glare. A cat slept on the rickety gate-post, despite the enmity of the dog of the “frequent visitor,” who had spent his limited energies in barking and bounding about it, and now sat and besieged it in silent patience and with a lolling tongue. The vines were fluttering about the porch; the passage between the two rooms was dark and cool. Teck Jepson, following, watched the group disappear within the door. Then he dismounted, and hitched the mare to the gate-post; the dog of the “frequent visitor” relaxed his vigilance to greet the new-comer with an amity that expressed all the compliments of the season. Jepson gave him no notice; but the mare shied violently and backed her ears as he leaped about her, and the cat on the gate-post took advantage of the opportunity, and ran up the chestnut-tree.