Harry's relaxed fingers fumbled vainly with the wet and obstinate shoe-strings. Aunt Debby came up with a large bowl of milk in each hand, and a great circular loaf of corn-bread under her arm. She placed her burden upon the floor, and with quick, deft fingers loosened the stubborn knots without an apparent effort, drew off the muddy shoes and set them in a dark corner near the fireplace before Harry fairly realized that he had let a woman do this humble office for him. The sight and smell of food aroused him from the torpor of intense fatigue, and he devoured the homely fare set before him with a relish that he had never before felt for victuals. As he ate his senses awakened so that he studied his hostess with interest. Hair which the advancing years, while bleaching to a snowy white had still been unable to rob of the curling waves of girlhood, rippled over a broad white brow, sober but scarcely wrinkled; large, serious but gentle gray eyes, and a small, firm mouth, filled with even white teeth were the salient features of a face at once resolute, refined and womanly. Long, slender hands, small feet, covered with coarse but well-fitting shoes, a slight, erect figure, suggestive of nervous strength, and clad in a shapely homespun gown stamped her as a superior specimen of the class of mountaineer woman to which she belonged. “Heah's 'nuther pone, honey,” she said to Fortner, as she handed both of them segments of another disk of corn-bread, to replace that which they had ravenously devoured. “An' le' me fill yer bowls agin. Hit takes a powerful sight o' bread an' milk ter do when one's rale hongry. But 'tain't like meat vittels. Ye can't eat 'nuff ter do ye harm.” She took from its place behind the rough stones that formed the jam of the fireplace a rude broom, made by shaving down to near its end long slender strips from a stick of pliant green hickory, then turning these over the end and confining them by a band into an exaggerated mop or brush. With this she swept back from the hearth of uneven stones the live coals flung out by the fire. “Thar's some walnut sticks amongst thet wood,” she said as she replaced the hearth-broom, “an' they pops awful.” From a pouch-like basket, made of skilfully interwoven hickory strips, and hanging against the wall, she took a half-finished stocking and a ball of yarn. Drawing a low rocking-chair up into the light, she seated herself and began knitting. As he neared the last of his second bowl of milk Fortner bethought himself, and glanced at Aunt Debby. Her work had fallen from her nervous hands and lay idly in her lap, while her great eyes were fixed hungrily upon him. “They've bin fouten over ter Wildcat to-day,” he said, answering their inquiry, without waiting to empty his mouth.