In this wise they came to the edge of the timber and surveyed the opening where lay the Gentry farm. Here Roxy left the child, motionless as a little image in her swaddling of thick shawls--stationing her in the grove of young chestnuts from which Lance had emerged the night he came singing to Callista's window--while she scouted with infinite pains the entire circuit of the clearing. She encountered nobody, and heard nothing; yet surely the house where Lance Cleaverage's wife and child were would be subject to espionage. The clear stars hung above the bleak treetops, and by their dim light she could just make out the various buildings, trees and bushes. Once more carrying Mary Ann Martha, she moved down to the corner of a small out-building. Here she gave her last instructions to the child. "Now, Ma'y-Ann-Marth', you go right up that line of bushes, on the shady side, to yo' Aunt Callisty's house; and don't you speak a word [350] to anybody but her. You say to her that they's somebody--mind, honey, _somebody_, don't you name who--that wants speech with her, a-waitin' out here by the chicken-house. Tell her to slip down here longside o' them same bushes. Can Mammy's gal say all that and say it right?" And she looked anxiously into Mary Ann Martha's solemn little face. The child nodded her head vigorously, and a moment later the shapeless small figure started worming its way up along the obscuring row of bushes. Finally she stopped on the doorstone of that cabin where she could hear the "thump-a-chug" of Callista's loom. She well remembered that the last time she was over here her Aunt Callie had entertained her in that building, refusing to come out and see her mother. Unacquainted with any such ceremonial as knocking, incapable of achieving the customary "hello," she planted herself on the doorstep and remarked gruffly, "Huh!" The sound did not amount to much as a hail or an alarum, yet it reached the ear of the woman who sat at the loom inside working, with what strange thoughts as her companions it were hard to guess. Somehow, it was now known all over both Turkey Track neighborhoods that Lance had killed his man and fled, and that the sheriff and posse were out after him. The face that [351] bent over the web of rag carpet was sharpened and bleached by this knowledge. The blue eyes gleamed bright with it. When that curious, gruff little "huh" came to her ears, Callista stopped her work like a shot and stood long hearkening. "Hit was nothing," she told herself, half-scornfully. "I'm just scared, and listenin' for something."