It was a busy day at Cartwright, and the little porch was filled with loungers. Old Jim Hunter was there with his long-barrelled rifle and a snarling opossum, the tail of which was held between the prongs of a split stick. When the animal showed a disposition to bite anybody, or crawl away, he subdued it instantly by turning the stick and twisting its tail. Joe Longfield had come with a basket of eggs packed in cotton-seed to exchange for their value in coffee, and the two wags were entertaining the crowd with jokes at the expense of each other. As the girl passed into the store Martin Worthy was weighing a pail of butter for a countryman in a slouch hat and a suit of brown jeans. She returned his nod and went to the little pen in the corner in which the mail was kept. "I cayn't 'low you but ten cents a pound for yore butter," Worthy said to the man. "Yore women folks never _will_ work the water out, an' it's al'ays puffy an' white. Town people don't want sech truck. It has to be firm and yaller. Look what the Beeson gals fetch once a week. I gladly pay 'em fifteen fer it." He uncovered a pile of firm golden balls and struck them with his paddle. "Any woman can make sech butter ef they won't feed the cows cotton-seed an' will take 'nough trouble." When the man had joined the group outside, Worthy came from behind the counter into the pen, wiping his hands on a sheet of brown paper. "I don't think thar's a thing fer any o' yore folks, Miss Hettie," he said to the girl, "but I'll look jest to satisfy you." He took a bundle of letters from a pigeon-hole and ran them hurriedly through his hands. "Not a thing," he concluded, putting the letters back; "jest as I thought." She paused for a moment as if about to ask a question. She put a thin hand on the cover of a sugar-barrel, and looked at him timidly from the depths of her bonnet as he came out of the pen, but she said nothing. As she started to go, her skirt caught on a sliver of the barrel, and, as she stooped to unfasten it, she almost fell forward. But she recovered herself and went out of the door towards the hitching-rack in front, paused, and looked back at the road over which she had come. "Don't seem to know exactly whar she _does_ want to go," remarked Jim Hunter, breaking the silence which had followed her departure from the store. "Who is she, anyway?" "Oz Fergerson's daughter Hettie," replied Worthy, leaning against the door-jamb. "She don't look overly well; I reckon that's why she quit workin' at the hotel. She's dyin' to git a letter from some'rs; she comes reg'lar every day an' goes away powerfully disappointed." "Never seed her before as I know of," said Longfield, handing Worthy his basket of eggs. The girl suddenly turned down the sidewalk. She passed Mrs. Webb's cottage and the bar and went into the hotel. Mrs. Floyd met her at the door. "Mis' Floyd, I want to see Harriet," she said.