"I don't believe in glorifying men by needing of them to any great measure," she declared. "With me in the house and the preacher across the fence it don't make no difference how good looking you are, Miss Charlotte, you won't be too much for our protection. Dabney can jest go on with the jedge." "Of course, little miss, you don't need me, but I sorter got rheumatics in my homesick and I begged off from Mas' Nickols," Dabney replied with the wily soothing that had made his conjugal life both pleasant and possible. I was thinking of the argument and smiled with tenderness as I saw the old grizzled white head bent over a hoe down in the dahlias, which he was bedding. The young man from White Plains had stayed to put the garden to bed as far as possible, and had left with perfect confidence in Dabney and the likely yellow boy he had found. And now in late October the garden was in a conflagration of blossoming glory. The borders of the walks blazed with the red and blue and gold and purple of chrysanthemums and asters and zinnias and dahlias, while long tendrils of russet autumn vines trailed in and over and around the flowers and shrubs and hedges. The tang of ripening and falling seed was mixed in all the perfume, and gorgeous leaves were beginning to rustle on the green grass. It was Nickols' first harvest of beauty, and somehow I felt that there was no need to regret that his eyes were not mortally there to gather the fruits. I went from the front porch up to my room to take off my hat and see if Martha had come from a day with Mother Spurlock down in the Settlement. I found instead of Martha or the boy or Mother Elsie, Jessie Litton seated at my desk and looking out the window across to Paradise Ridge. "I came up to wait, Charlotte, because--because I'm in deep water and need a hand out. You have always helped and somehow I feel that you have so much more to give me now than you ever had. Clifton Gray told me last night that he loved me and is going to break his engagement with Letitia Cockrell. He had heard Letitia and Nell talk over Nell's mourning trousseau for the winter and he was disgusted--that, and--and I think it has been coming some time. He is with Mr. Goodloe a lot lately in getting things about the town started to going again and he is--is thinking. I don't know how to help him think; it's a thing I've never done. I am at sea myself but I know that he must not throw Letitia over. Will you talk to him?" "I couldn't help him if--if Mr. Goodloe can't," I faltered, simply sick with distress.