The next instant, however, he was another man, calm, gentle, smiling. He released her hand, with the words: "I don't want to bother you none, though, or make you go home. Stay another week, and try me. I'll do like you say--be just friends. I got a lot to do this week, getting out timber, and maybe I can kindly work you off my mind." "I don't doubt you can if you try," said Isabel; "I'll give you the chance, anyhow. You see, I know I am very much needed in the work here, and really don't want to leave." He helped her into the saddle, and they rode on as rapidly as possible, in the effort to catch up with the crowd. VIII MOONSHINE The night of the women's return from the funeral occasion, there was again some shooting down in the village, as there had been the night previous; and the women feared that Billy Lee was one of the culprits, as Lethie came up in his place to milk their cow next morning. They were much troubled; and as Uncle Ephraim Kent, on account of rheumatism, was unable to come to his reading lesson Monday morning, Amy and Virginia, accompanied by Isabel, went across Troublesome after dinner, to consult with him on the subject. The Kent lands extended for a mile or two along the far side of the creek, and Uncle Ephraim's home was in a hollow opposite the village. They crossed on a long footlog, which was chained to a great water-elm on Uncle Ephraim's bank, so that it should not be entirely carried away by "tides." The old man was sitting just inside the doorway of his ancient log house, trousers rolled up, and his legs, from the knee down, bound in red flannel. His wife placed chairs. It was Isabel's first visit to his home, and her eyes flew at once to the long old muzzle-loading rifle and the strange musical instrument that hung over his "fireboard," and as soon as possible she asked him about them. The rifle, it appeared, had been the one used by his "grandsir," the old Cap'n, when he "fit under Washington"; the dulcimer he himself had made when a young man courting his first wife (the present one was his second). "Dulcimores," he said, "used to be the onliest music in this country; the knowledge how to make 'em and pick on 'em was fotched in by our forebears. But banjos and fiddles has nigh run 'em out now." At Isabel's urging, he picked a tune on the old dulcimer, laying it across his knees and using two quills, one to "note" with, and one to pick with. The music was like the droning of a million mosquitoes.