The shower brought them all indoors. Callista came reluctantly from the thicket by the far spring-branch where she had been lingering. Octavia made her last appeal publicly, since it might not otherwise be spoken--and was denied. As old Ajax helped her into the buckboard, something in her tear-disfigured face seemed to anger him. "Well, ye spiled the gal rotten!" he said testily, without introduction or preface, climbing meanwhile to his seat beside her. "Ye spiled Callisty rotten, that's what ye did! And then ye give her to one of the cussedest highheaded fellers I ever seen--a man that'd as soon take a charge o' buckshot as a dare--a man that'd die before he'd own he's beat. Lance Cleaverage ain't the meanest man in the world, and Callisty would do very well if she could be made to behave; but the two of 'em--" He sighed impatiently, shook his head, and flogged the old horse gently and steadily without in the least affecting its gait. Suddenly he spoke out again with a curious air of unwillingness and at much more length than Grandfather Gentry usually did. "Them two was borned and made for each other. Ef they can ever fight it out and git to agree, hit'll be one o' the finest matches anybody ever seed. But [232] _whilst_ they're a fightin' it out--huh-uh,"--his face drew into a look of wincing sympathy--"I don't know as I want ary one of 'em under my roof. I used to raise a good deal of Cain o' my own--yes, I played the davil a-plenty. I got through with that as best I might. I'm a old man now. I like to see some peace. I did tell you that you could bid Callisty come home with us; but she's done told you no--an' I ain't sorry. She's the onliest gran'child I've got left, an'--I think a heap of her. If she was to come on her own motions--that would be different. But having spiled her as you have did, Octavy, best is that you should let her and Lance alone for a spell." His daughter-in-law looked at him mutely out of her reddened eyes, and the balance of the drive was made in silence. And so the slow summer drew forward, Callista in her father-in-law's house, never going back to the cabin at the head of Lance's Laurel, sending Polly or the Widow Griever to get things which she now and again needed from the place; Lance over in the sawmill camp, working brutally hard, faring wretchedly, and eating his heart out with what he hoped was a brave face.