"Well, stranger," began the mountain girl, with a look of confidence coming into her face that was like a little pink wide-open arbutus, "I reckon you won't believe me--like Jed didn't at first, though he do now." "Don't tell, honey," the prisoner commanded and implored in the one plea. "I'd rather take the pen. They won't believe you." "It war this way," she continued, without seeming to hear the command of her young husband, upon whose arm the parson again laid a restraining hand. "Jed he had unhitched the team and tied them with their rope halters to the fence 'fore our cabin, when it was almost dark 'fore we got thar. Then while I was unpacking the wagon he got on one horse and rid down the side of the gulch to see whar water was at. I was jest takin' the things in when a man come along leading five mules and riding on one. He was a city stranger in fine clothes and he asked me fer a meal because he had lost his way from a man who had a tent and grub. My mammy allus cooked fer strangers, so--" "She shore do that," ejaculated Mr. Turner, proud of his noted hospitality. "So I made up a fire hasty in the yard and put on a coffee pot," the girl continued. "I had some corn pone and bacon my mammy had give me fer a snack and I het that up. Whilst I got the meal the stranger he went on unloading our wagon and then he come to a bundle of bed quilts what my mammy have been saving fer me from her mammy and her grandmammy. He took a notion to them and ast me how old they was and I told him about as old as any twenty-inch cedar on Old Harpeth. He asked me to trade 'em, but I couldn't abear to until he had riz to fifty dollars, what was the price of a young mule, all on account of his sister wanting quilts like them up in a big city. I was kinder crying quiet at letting 'em go, but I thought about what that mule would be to Jed who wuz so good to me, so I give 'em to him and he tied 'em on his saddle and went away. It war most a hour when Jed come and when I told him and showed him the money, he didn't believe me about them old quilts and he tooken the rope from around the neck of the mule he'd been riding and--" She paused here in her story and put her scarlet flower face in her hands, while Jed groaned and dropped his own face down upon his arm. The old judge's face took on a grim sternness, the jury stopped whittling and the face of every woman in the court room gazed upon the girl with stern unbelieving accusation. "Go on, now, honey, but they won't believe you," commanded Jed with a sob. "Your husband took the rope from around the neck of the mule and left him untied?" asked father gently. "What fer, Melissa?" asked the old judge, without gentleness or any show of confidence in what the shrinking woman was saying. "To beat me with. He war crazed mad and called me a name, but I don't hold it ag'in him," answered the young wife, with a glance at the cowering prisoner.