"Oh, no, I mean 'he'. I can remember how his hair waved, though I wasn't but sixteen at the time; and the day when he hitched my hoss for me, all the girls looked down-trod. It was more than fifty year ago." "Of course I am a much younger woman," replied Sister Starbuck, "and I can't look back an' see no man but J--J--Jasper." They returned to their silent weeping, and after a time a cup of coffee was suggested. Sister Barker objected. Her mind was so full of the past that she had no heart to swallow the devices of the present, but upon persuasion she yielded; and when the coffee was drunk, pipes were lighted and comfortably back they sat and talked about the neighbors. After a while an old carryall wobbled up to the gate and out got Mrs. Spencer. By the time she reached the door-step fresh tears were falling. "Come right in," said Margaret. "I am so glad to see you at this time." "And what do you want with me--to set down an' help you cry? Wall, I ain't of the cryin' sort. I put my cryin' aside when I got outen the cradle." She sat down and with a palm-leaf fanned herself. "It's a plum outrage," she said. "An' what's the matter with you, Miz Barker? Ain't lost a cow, have you? Why, yo' face looks like a old rock atter a heavy dew." Mrs. Barker--they were not sisters now--wiped away her yellowish tears. "I have the right to cry if I feel like it," she replied. "I was a thinkin' of he." "A thinkin' of the cat's foot," the old "heroic" snapped. "You mean that journeyman hatter that you've talked about so much? He was drunk half the time an' wan't worth the attention it would take to shove him into the river. Conscience alive, you have shed enough tears over him to drown him. Now quit it an' let's talk business. They've got our folks in jail an' they air goin' to keep 'em there the Lord knows how long. An' if the law didn't have some little jestice on its side I'd take an axe an' go down there an' break down that jail door. But you know that Jasper _has_ laid himse'f liable an' so has my boy, for knowin' of the fact--an' so have we all, for that matter. Hah, I was jest a thinkin' when Spencer had the fight at Pettigrew's mill. Them Sarver boys--ez triflin' a lot ez ever lived--had him down when I rid up on a hoss. An' the fust thing they know'd I stobbed one of 'em between the shoulder blades--an' they thought he never would git well." "An' they killed Spencer right there," said Margaret.