They replied in a breath:— “The pritties’ yearthly human ever you see!” “Bigges’ gray eyes!” cried Mrs. Guyther, “an’ black lashes!” “An’ yaller hair—yaller ez gold an’ haffen a yard long,” exclaimed aunt Jemima. “Fine bleached skin, white ez milk,” said Mrs. Guyther. “An’ yit she’s all pink—special when she laughs,” cried aunt Jemima, “jes’ like these hyar wild roses—ye ’member ’em, don’t ye, Ab, growin’ in the fence corner in the June weather”— —“Sech a many of ’em over yander by Keedon Bluffs,” put in Mrs. Guyther. “I ’member ’em,” said Ab. “Jes’ the color of ’em when she laughs—jes’ like they be, a-blowin’ about in the wind,” declared aunt Jemima. “She’s named right—Rosy; she’s like ’em,” said Mrs. Guyther. The red glow of the embers was full on the blind man’s face, encircled by shadows. It seemed half smiling, or perhaps that was some illusion of the fire-light, for it was pensive too, and wistful. He pondered for a while; then—“I’d like ter see her,” he said, simply. “I would.” Every word was distinctly audible in the roof-room. Jerry Binwell sat in a rickety chair amongst the shadows, his head attentively bent down, his hands on his knees, his hat drooping half over his face. The rifts between the puncheons of the flooring admitted a red glow from the fire-lit room below, and illumined the dusky loft with longitudinal shafts of light. A triumphant smile played over his face as the women talked of the beauty of the little Rosamond—a smile that might have expressed only paternal pride and satisfaction in the comfortable results of the evening. But when the blind man’s rich low voice sounded, “I’d like ter see her—I would,” the listener’s face changed. The narrow gleam of light from the cracks in the floor played upon the mocking animosity in his eyes, the sneer on his lips as they parted. He stood suddenly erect, in a tense soldierly position—among the shadows, and the bags of “yerbs,” and the old clothes, and the peltry hanging from the ridge-pole—brought his heels together with a swift precision, and then the deserter mockingly carried his hand to his hat in a military salute. “I would,” dreamily reiterated the blind soldier in the room below. The deserter, relaxing his martial attitude to his normal slouch, noiselessly smote his thigh with his right hand, and burst into silent laughter. IV. The next morning Ike woke with an odd, heavy sense of having sustained some serious misfortune, and it was several moments before he could identify it; when he did, he was amazed to find it only his intuitive distrust of the stranger’s presence here, and an aversion to its continuance. He upbraided himself in the same instant for the inhospitable thought. “Hyar I be, actially a-grudgin’ the houseless ones a shelter from the yellimints,” he said in shame.