"You want to git inside?" Miss Lucy felt her fingers gently removed, and the door pushed back. She looked up to meet Mr. Lindsay's eyes fixed in stern earnestness upon her. "You thought you'd run off from me, did you?" he queried abruptly: "I 'lowed when I saw you a startin' off in this wind that you'd had your orders give you, and what I follered you wuz to find out ef you really wanted to obey them orders and to git away from me." Miss Lucy backed inside the door and looked furtively about her. The tobacco had all been taken down, stripped, and bulked down in a half dozen long, high ricks, from "long red," to "green,"--ready for the buyers' inspection, and the dusk of the empty spaces, from the cypress-shingled roof, to the floor, covered with its confusion of broken leaves, was only relieved by the sunlight that filtered in between the outer planks of the barn. The wind rumbled around the barn, and above its roar sounded the far off call of a crow, and the chugging of a freight on the nearest railway, told of a not far distant rain. "You needn't be oneasy, Miss Lucy": Mr. Lindsay drew the doors together softly. "There hain't nobody a watchin' us here, ner a listenin' as fur as I know, and you are perfectly safe to talk. Ef you don't keer to have me around no more, jest say so, and I'll go right back to the house, and gether up my thengs, and leave now, instid of waitin' until the middle o' the week." He paused, his tone of reckless indifference belied by his grave face and appealing eyes. For once in her life, Miss Lucy was forced out of her habitual indecision. "I--I--" she stammered, clasping and unclasping her hands, her eyes following a dry tobacco leaf that a sudden gust whirled rattling by her feet, "Mr. Lindsay, I hope I haven't never done anything to make you thenk I don't want you around!" The tense cords at his temples relaxed slightly: he took a step nearer her. "Then you don't believe nothin' ag'in me, and don't keer nothin' fer old Brock?" "Mr. Brock--why, Mr. Brock--he hasn't never said nothin' about me bein' anything to him!" cried Miss Lucy in wonderment. "I know he hain't yit," he broke out tumultuously, "fer very shame, but he wants to, and the way you treated him yisterday made me thenk maybe you'd listen to what he's got to say--maybe you'd ruther have him around than me!" "I jest treated him like I would Mr. Castle or any other of the neighbors when they come in," defended Miss Lucy.