"I reckon he's a settin' tobacco, too, 'way down that away," she mused sorrowfully, turning her face toward the north: "and maybe he'll overwork and make hisse'f sick. I wisht I could hear from him some way. I ain't heard sence Pa--sence Pa ordered him never to come about us any more! Seems like he might write, but he's afraid of gittin' me in trouble, I guess, ef he sent me a letter through the mail. Pa and Nancy'd--" The spider curled on the web that hung from the top rail of the gate to the post, felt a heavy drop on his back, and pirouetted away in fright. But a long mournful bellow from beyond the barn prevented the fall of any more drops on his web. "Poor old Belle! She must be a gittin' worse," thought Miss Lucy, hurrying to the barn-lot, in which, the night before, she had left the roan cow that for more than a week had drooped and languished. To her surprise, the cow was pacing back and forth, restless as something caged, while the other cattle in the adjoining grass field, clustered not far from the boundary fence, regarding their sick mate in a peculiar, half-fearful fashion. Miss Lucy set down her buckets, and flew to the house. "O Pa!" she cried: "I wisht you'd come down to the barn a minute. Old Belle's worse, I believe, and she's actin' so strange I am afraid to milk the other cows in the lot with her!" "Aw, she won't hurt ye, Lucy," grumbled the old man, rising reluctantly. "Have the mar's come up to be fed yit?" When Mr. James had seen the sick beast, he was much vexed. "The best cow on the place, exceptin' the one you claim, Lucy Ann, and me not able to work with her! Now as soon as you git the milkin' done, and eat, you go git old man Doggett. Maybe _he_ can do somethin' fer her." Not for many weeks had Miss Lucy been allowed at the Doggetts. Mr. Lindsay kept his trunk there, and came back occasionally. This Miss Nancy knew, and though she was quite happy in the thought that Mr. Lindsay, in his anger toward her father, had given up Miss Lucy, she reasoned that if Miss Lucy were allowed to go to the Doggetts, it were possible she might sometime see him there, and the spell of his anger might be broken. So Mr. James, instructed by his youngest daughter, had ordered Miss Lucy to keep away from the Doggetts. "People'll be a talkin' about you, Lucy Ann, ef you go there," they had said, and Miss Lucy meekly accepted their dictum, and staid away. "I don't know ef there ever was a woman situated like me," she thought to herself, as she ran down the familiar little path, "fifty years old--afraid of her folks--afraid to do like she wants to!" A sob escaped her, a rebellious sob for the hard fate that rendered her path of love, one so stony.