She checked, turned, flung the sunbonnet from her and dropped the shawl upon it, then, with a quick, light step, crossed the porch and noiselessly pushed open the door of the room in which Lance lay. The little pale moon made faint radiance in the room, and by its light she saw her husband lying on that monster spare bed which is the pride of every country housewife. He had folded and put aside the ruffled covers of her contriving, and lay dressed as he was, with only his shoes removed. On tiptoe she drew near and [210] stood looking down at him. They said if you held a looking-glass over a sleeping person's face and asked him a question, he'd tell you the truth. What was it she wanted to know of Lance? Not whether he loved her or no, though she said to herself a dozen times a day that he cared nothing about her, and had never really cared. The sleeper stirred and turned on his pillow, offering her a broader view of that strangely disconcerting countenance of slumber, as ambiguous well-nigh as the face of death itself. She wheeled and fled noiselessly, as she had come in. The light, approaching horse's hoofs had ceased to sound some moments now. At the gate a mounted figure stood motionless within the shadow of the big pine. She ran down the path to find Flenton Hands. "I--Callista," he faltered in a low voice, "don't be mad. I--looks like I couldn't leave you this-a-way. I was plumb to the corner of our big field, and--I come back." He glanced with uncertainty and apprehension toward the house; then, as he noted her shawl and bonnet, got quickly from the saddle, saying hurriedly, eagerly, "I 'lowed maybe you might change your mind--and I--I come back." "Yes," said Callista, not looking at him. "I'm ready to go now, Flent." [211] CHAPTER XIV. ROXY GRIEVER'S GUEST. IT was a strange day whose gray dawn brought Callista to her father-in-law's door. Where she had wandered, questioning, debating, agonizing, since she dismissed Flenton Hands at the corner of old Kimbro's lean home pasture, only Callista knew. The Judas tree down by the spring branch might have told a tale of clutching fingers that reached up to its low boughs, while somebody stood shaking and listening to the sound of the creek that came down the gorge past that home Callista was leaving. The mosses between there and the big road could have whispered of swift-passing feet that went restlessly as though driven to and fro over their sodden carpet for hours. The bluff where a trail precariously rounds old Flat Top kept its secret of a crouching figure that looked out over the Gulf, black in the now moonless night, of a sobbing voice that prayed, and accused and questioned incoherently.