in a clearing where a new log cabin showed clear in the open under the moon. In the single room of the house a woman lay sleeping with a little child in its cradle beside her bed. She rose up and put out her hand instinctively to still the child, but it was sleeping quietly, and then she started up awake, and listened for the voice which she had dreamt was calling her. There was no voice, and then there was a voice calling hoarsely, weakly, “Nancy! Nancy!” In her dream she had thought it was the voice of her husband stealing back to her in the night, and it was in the terror of her dream that she now sprang from her bed, with her heart aching for pity of him, to forbid him and rebuke him for breaking his promise, and to scold him away. But as she stood listening, and the voice came again she knew it was not the voice of Laban. She ran to the ladder which led to the cabin loft, and called up through the open trapdoor, “Jane! Jane! Come down here to the baby, will you? I've got to leave her a minute.” “What for?” the girl answered sleepily. Then, “Oh, I'll come. She ain't sick, is she, Aunt Nancy? Oh, I do hope she ain't sick!” “No. She ain't sick,” Nancy said, as she put her hands up to help the girl place her feet aright on the rungs of the ladder. “But--listen!” she whispered as the voice outside called again. “It's that miser'ble wretch! It's Joseph Dylks! I've got to go to him! Don't you say a word, Jane Gillespie! He's Joey's father, and he must be at death's door, or he wouldn't come to mine.” She left the girl standing dazed, and ran out and round the cabin. In the shadow that it cast in the moon, Dylks crouched close in the angle made by the chimney. “Oh, Nancy!” he implored her, “do give me something to eat! Something warm. Coffee, if you've got it. I've been sick, and I'm starving.” She knew without seeing it in the shadow how he was stretching out pleading hands to her, and she had mercy upon him. But she said stonily, “Wait a minute. Don't be a cry-baby,” and ran back to the door, and called to the girl within, “Rake open the fire, Jane, and set the kittle on.” Then she ran back to Dylks and stood over him. “Where you been? Don't you know they'll kill you if they ketch you?” “Yes, I know it, Nancy. But I knew this would be the last place they would come for me. Will the coffee be ready soon? Oh, I'm so faint! I reckon I'm going to die, Nancy.” “I reckon you ain't goin' to die before you get your coffee. It'll be ready as soon as the kittle boils.” She stood looking grimly down at him, while he brokenly told, so far as he knew it, the story of the days he had passed in hiding. “I reckon,” she said, with bitter scorn, “that _I_ could have fetched you out. I'd 'a' brought you some hot coffee to the door of your den, and you'd 'a' come when you smelt it.” “Yes, that's true,” he owned in meek acceptance of her scorn.