I seemed to feel strange padding footsteps down in my depths and I also tiptoed up to my room after I had heard his door shut. After I had switched on my light (for under the roof of the Poplars electricity had come to aid the candles of hallowed tradition, and was called by Mammy, in deep suspicion, "ha'nt light") I discovered clutched in my cold fingers the yellow envelope the romantic Mr. Pate had brought to me in the midnight. It read: "Am coming down on Friday. Am afraid to trust the world and the flesh and think the third member of the carnal firm ought to be on the job. N." "Now I am frightened really," I confided to myself as I slipped between the scented sheets and drew a corner of the rose-colored blanket over my head. "I don't know what to do." CHAPTER IV TO TURKEY GULCH The next morning I was very late in descending to my breakfast, but arrived in time to witness Mammy's arraignment of my father, which was conducted in perfect respect, but with great severity. "I know, Jedge, that menfolks don't know lace that costs a million dollars a yard from a blind woman's tatting, and that's what makes me say what I does, that it sure am dangersome fer 'em to go on a rampage in womenfolks' trunks. I ain't never goin' to git the stains from them clods of earth outen my lambs' clothes, even if the minister did help you put 'em on 'em." "But, Melissa, those anemones were more valuable than any lace ever manufactured, and I am sure that Charlotte will absolve me when she hears of the exigencies of the case," father pleaded over the top of his morning paper. Mammy was pretending to dust his study, as a blind to the lecture she was administering. "Yes, sir, I knows all that; but that lace was a heap more valuable than that toothache in that wuthless Dabney's jaw, which he could er wropped up, and hunted out all the old sheets for you instid of that petticoat with them real lace ruffles," was Mammy's firm rejoinder, while she passed a feather duster over the table and rolled her eyes at Dabney. "Let's let them both off this time, Mammy. Dabney can take the trunks where they belong and lock them up," I said, as I went toward the dining room, while she followed to minister upon my tardiness. "Them was all your finest lingerings," she said as she plied me with breakfast. "And they was all lost on menfolks. They hasn't even one lady rode by while I had 'em on the line in the sunshine," she grumbled as she finally retired to the kitchen.