And suiting the action to the word, the old dame did arise, and catching her scant skirts up in either hand, executed a sturdy jig after the fashion of the olden times, stamping out the time on the puncheon floor, with an occasional exclamation of her own, whirling and turning, and now and then extending her skirts, at last snapping her fingers as she ceased. She seemed not too weary nor out of breath as she sank again into her chair. “My God, Meliss’,” she said, “I’m glad thar’s one Joslin that’s showed hisself a man!” She spoke to a vacant room—the other and younger woman, gone fey of her own savage humors, once more had flung from the room and was standing, hands clenched, in the yard beyond. But old Granny Joslin was not perturbed. She lighted her pipe once more and sat for a time engaged in her own thoughts as before—her eyes fixed exactly on a certain knot of a certain log in the rude wall—she voiced her own conclusions to herself. “I was about that height my own self when I was a gal. An’ Lord! hain’t it sweet—to come just inside the arm of a strong man, Meliss’? Don’t I know? “I was a-wonderin’ fer a while which one of them two wimmern Davy’d turn up with fustest. But, sakes! I know—he tolt me plenty, if he didn’t Meliss’. French-Irish—dark and curly-haired—big eyes, like enough—she come right under his arm when he stood up—the sort that’s sort of squushy when you hug ‘em—maybe light on her feet—laughin’, maybe! Wimmern that laughs has always got the aidge on them that cries. Why, I kin see that womern dancin’ as she goes along, alive clar down to her toes—that’s the one—you hear me now!” And having demolished all argument on the part of the listening knot, Granny Joslin at length did knock the last ashes from her pipe, and, rising, leave the empty house and cold hearthfire of what was no longer a home. CHAPTER XVIII MARCIA HADDON DAVID JOSLIN wished nothing so much as to be quite alone. He did not rejoin his companions on the hill. Pleading his errand at Windsor, he set out at once down stream with no companion other than his own bitter thoughts. It seemed to him he never had known a longer or more terrible day, nor had the future ever appeared to him so hopeless and foredoomed. It was yet daylight when he arrived at the little town, and he turned once more to the boarding house of the Widow Dunham. As he reached the gate he caught the fragrance of a cigar whose aroma was unusual in these parts. Unwilling to meet strangers, he halted an instant; but finding no way out of it, he advanced, an odd sort of conviction suddenly in his mind. Sitting there, almost as they had sat two years ago, he saw two figures, both familiar to him. “Well, well,” growled the raucous voice of James Haddon as he turned. “What, what? We meet again! How’s this happen, stranger? Where you been all the while?” Joslin shook the hand of each simply, without a word.