An unrailed stairway mounted beside the front wall. Jeanne had heard Mrs. Roundcounter tell how many little rooms were overhead, and what stores of family goods were piled there, disregarded by a young man who cared for no wife but his fiddle. No attention could be given to the upper rooms. Amid all her services, the girl was full of starts and panics, turning her head and widening her eyes at any stir without. She mopped the broad boards worn by foot-marks of dead dancers; she washed log imbedded windows and an accumulation of yellow bowls and pewter; and drew the only easy chair to the hearth. Something in a green bag hung on the wall farthest from the fire, which Jeanne knew to be the De Zhirley fiddle. She touched it carefully with a turkey-wing duster, recoiling from its faint ting as if some charm had been ignorantly worked. Dried meat and scarlet peppers, a gun and powderhorn hung on the richly smoked hewn joists. She felt keen, quiet delight in the place, and reluctance to leave it. The jollity of former times, perhaps, lingered, making a fit atmosphere for girlhood. But she was standing with her shawl over her head, casting back a last look, when some hand blundered at the latch outside. She sprang upstairs and put the first door between her and the intruder on the lightning of impulse. Some person entered and seemed to pause and listen suspiciously. Her heart labored like the beating of a steamer, and she expected to hear feet following her up the stairs. But after uncertain shuffling the comer dragged a chair, and, with a suggestion of effort, sat down. Jeanne knew it could not be young De Zhirley, whom she had just seen through a window fighting the current in midriver. He had a loaded wagon and a pair of restless mules on board; and he ran back and forth outside the railing of his boat, now poling, now steering, and now pulling with a wing-like oar. Jeanne could have been at the top of the bluff before his return. And here she was, trapped in an upper room, vaguely ashamed; unable to come down and face eyes which might insult her, yet terrified by the prospect of indefinite hiding. Daylight’s gradual fading out was of more interest to her than the accumulation of De Zhirley things around her. She listened for the crunch of the ferryboat prow on gravel; and voices and departing wheels at last moved by the cabin, and the proper owner entered. She stealthily unlatched her door and set it ajar, so the crack intersected the hearth. There in the seat she had taken thought to set ready sagged the drunken person of her stepbrother.