Then for another hour Rose Mary worked alone in the milk-house, humming a happy little tune to herself as she pounded and patted and moulded away.  Every now and then she would glance down Providence Road toward Boliver, far away around the bend, and when at last she saw old Gray and her rider turn behind the hill she began to straighten things preparatory to a return to the Briars.  In the world-old drama of creation which is being ever enacted anew in the heart of a woman, it is well that the order of evolution is reversed and only after the bringing together and marshaling of forces unsuspected even by herself comes the command for light on the darkness of the situation.  Rose Mary was as yet in the dusk of the night which waited for the voice of God on the waters, and there was yet to come the dawn of her first day.

And in the semi-mist of the dream she finally ascended the hill toward the Briars with a bucket in one hand and a sunbonnet swinging in the other.  But coming down the trail she met one of the little tragedies of life in the person of Stonewall Jackson, who was dragging dejectedly across the yard from the direction of the back door with Mrs. Sniffer and all five little dogs trailing in his wake.  And as if in sympathy with his mood, the frisky little puppies were waddling along decorously while Sniffer poked her nose affectionately into the little brown hand which was hanging without its usual jaunty swing.  Rose Mary took in the situation at a glance and sank down under one of the tall lilac bushes and looked up with adoring eyes as Stonie came and took a spread-legged stand before her.

“What’s the matter, honey-sweet?” she asked quickly.

“Rose Mamie, it’s a lie that I don’t know whether I told or not.  It’s so curious that I don’t hardly think God knows what I did,” and the General’s face was set and white with his distress.

“Tell me, Stonie, maybe I can help you decide,” said Rose Mary with quick sympathy.

“It was one of them foolish turkey hens and Tobe sat down on her and a whole nest of most hatched little turkeys.  Didn’t nobody know she was a-setting in the old wagon but Aunt Amandy, and we was a-climbing into it for a boat on the stormy sea, we was playing like.  It was mighty bad on Tobe’s pants, too, for he busted all the eggs.  Looks like he just always finds some kind of smell and falls in it.  I know Mis’ Poteet’ll be mad at him.  And then in a little while here come Aunt Amandy to feed the old turkey, and she ’most cried when she found things so bad all around everywhere.  We had runned behind the corn-crib, but when I saw her begin to kinder cry I comed out.  Then she asked me did I break up her nest she was a-saving to surprise Uncle Tucker with, and I told her no ma’am I didn’t—­but I didn’t tell her I was with Tobe climbing into the wagon, and it only happened he slid down first on the top of the old turkey.  It don’t think like to me it was a lie, but it feels like one right here,” and Stonie laid his hand on the pit of his little stomach, which was not far away from the seat of his pain if the modern usage assigned the solar-plexus be correct.