"Well enough--_too_ good to be a-traipsing over the land by theirselves this way." He shook his head. "And as for their doings, hit's a sight to hear the singing and merriment that goes on up thar on that hill when the wind is right. Folks has wore a slick trail, traveling up and down. But not _me_! Solomon says, 'Bewar' of the strange woman'; and I hain't the man to shun his counsel." "I allow they are right women--I allow you wouldn't have tuck no harm," soothed Aunt Ailsie. "Little you know, Ailsie, little you know. If you had sot on as many grand juries as me, you wouldn't allow nothing about no woman, not even them you had knowed all your life, let alone quare, fotched-on ones that blows in from God knows whar, and darrs their Maker with naught but a piece of factory betwixt them and the elements!" Aunt Ailsie dropped the subject. "What about Fulty?" she asked, in a troubled voice. "There was several indictments again' him and his crowd this time--three for shooting on the highway, two for shooting up the town, two for breaking up meetings--same old story." "And you holped again to indict him?" remarked Aunt Ailsie, somewhat bitterly. "I did, too," he asserted, in some anger, "and will every time he needs hit." "Seems like a man ought to have a leetle mercy on his own blood." He held up a stern forefinger. "Let me hear no more sech talk," he commanded; "I am a man of jestice, and I aim to deal hit out fa'r and squar', let hit fall whar hit may." Next morning, which was Saturday, Aunt Ailsie mildly suggested at breakfast: "I might maybe ride in to town to-day, if you say so. I can't weave no furder till I get some thread, and there's a good mess of eggs, and several beans and sweet apples, to trade." Uncle Lot fixed severe eyes upon her. "Ailsie," he said, "you wouldn't have no call to ride in to The Forks to-day if them quare women wasn't thar. You allus was possessed to run atter some new thing. My counsel to you is the same as Solomon's--'Bewar' of the strange woman'!" However, he did not absolutely forbid her to go; and she said gently, as he started up to the cornfield a little later, hoe in hand:-- "If I do ride in, you'll find beans and 'taters in the pot, and coffee and a good pone of corn-bread on the hairth, and the table all sot." Two hours later, clothed in the hot brown-linsey dress, black sunbonnet, new print apron, and blue-yarn mitts, which she wore on funeral occasions and like social events, she set forth on old Darb, the fat, flea-bitten nag, with a large poke of beans across her side-saddle, and baskets of eggs and apples on her arms. The half-mile down her branch and the two miles up Troublesome Creek had never seemed so long, and the beauty of green folding mountains and tall trees mirrored in winding waters was thrown away on her.