"I haven't done nothin'--anything, I mean," she murmured in distress. "Why did she look at me that way, I wonder." Then suddenly she understood. That was just it. She had not done anything. The old woman was alone; her husband in prison and her son hunted from hiding place to hiding place like some beast dogged to death, and she, the girl who had always been like a daughter in that house, had been too stunned by her own sorrow to take account of her neighbor's distress. Mrs. Stacy had always expected that Blossom's children would be her grandchildren. Turner had been wounded in defense of Jerry Henderson. Into the girl's memory flashed a picture with a vivid completeness which had failed to impress her in its just proportions at the time of its reality. Then her eyes had been engrossed with one figure in the group to the exclusion of all others. Now in retrospect she could visualize the trio that had stumbled through the door of her house, when they brought Jerry Henderson in. She could see again the way Bear Cat had reeled and braced himself against the wall, and the stricken wretchedness of his face. Slowly the tremendous self-effacement of his generosity began to dawn upon her, and to sting her with self-reproach. So long as she lived she felt that her heart was dead to any love save that for the man in the grave, but to the old comradeship--to the gratitude for such a friendship as few women had ever had--she would no longer be recreant. No wonder that Turner's mother looked at her with tightly pressed lips and hostile eyes. She would go over there and do what she could to make amends and alleviate the loneliness of a house emptied of its men; a house over which hung the unlifting veil of terror, which saw in the approach of every passer-by a possible herald of tragedy. * * * * * Uncle Israel Calvert sat alone by the small red-hot stove of his way-side store late in the afternoon. He was half dozing in his hickory-withed chair, and it was improbable that any customer would arouse him. A wild day of bellowing wind was spending itself in gusty puffs and the promise of blizzard, while a tarnished sun sank into lurid banks of cloud-threat. Uncle Israel's pipe had gone out, though it still hung precariously between his clean-shaven jaws and his white poll fell drowsily forward from time to time. He listened between cat-naps to the voice of the storm and mumbled to himself. "I reckon nobody won't come in ter-night--leastways nobody thet hain't hurtin' powerful bad fer some plumb needcessity." Then he fell again to dozing. The rush of wind through a door suddenly opened, and closed, roused him, and seeing the figure of a man on the threshold, Uncle Israel came to his feet with a springy quickness of amazement.