"Is that all, now, Liza? Are you all right till the folks get back?" questioned Callista. "Well, then I'll leave you--they're a-going," and with an effort for composure, she turned and made her way down to Flenton Hands and the new buggy. Her mother was staying to get dinner for everybody--a piece of genuine self-sacrifice, this--and as Callista passed her in the kitchen, she made a half-hearted offer to change places. "No, honey," said Octavia, resolutely. "You go right along. I don't mind this. I"--she lowered her tone to a whisper of furtive pleasure--"I seen Lance bringing up the prettiest little black mare for you to ride." With unwonted demonstrativeness she bent forward and kissed the young, smooth, oval cheek. "We ain't got each other for always," she said gently. "Let's be kind and lovin' while we have. Go 'long, honey, an' ride with Lance. Granny Yearwood wouldn't begrudge it to ye." Flenton met the girl at the door, and walked with her down to the gate. It was an almost shocking breach of etiquette for him to let the entire procession get away without him, yet neither mentioned it. Callista's eyes were on two [45] mounted figures that closed the train, and she scarcely spoke as she seated herself in the new vehicle. The graveyard was a stony, briery patch of ground, as desolate a spot as could well be found. In a country where the houses were so scattered that the word "neighborhood" had scarcely any meaning, there was no public sentiment concerning the care of the abandoned God's acre; but each, when a grave was dug in it for one of his clan, resolved on making some effort toward its improvement, and, in the struggle for existence, promptly forgot. It was guarded partly by a rail fence that Derf's Old Piedy, a notorious rogue, could lay down with practised horns any time she liked; and partly by a crooked, crumbling wall of stones, picked up off the land itself and laid there by hands which had long been dust. A wide place it was, for its scanty tenantry, with hollows hidden in liana-woven thickets and straggling knolls yellowed with sedge-grass. As is usual where a hard-wood forest has been cleared, young pines were springing up all over the waste; one could see, between their dark points, the blue rim of the world; for this land lay high, on a sort of divide or shed, where nothing would grow. The unmended road was full of vehicles, the graveyard filling with people, as Callista and Flenton came up. The ride had been one of [46] discomfort to the girl. She liked to have her conquests to display before others; but she always shrank from being alone with Flenton Hands, and to-day his insistent love-making had filled her with cold distaste. "And you are certainly the sweetest comforter ever a man had in time of affliction," he told her over and over again, with sanctimonious inflections. "If I had you always by my side, looks like to me the world's sorrows wouldn't have no power on me."