The choir had just finished singing “Rock of Ages” as the constable turned his venerable piece of horseflesh into the front yard.

“Well, well,” he said, in a voice like a graphophone badly in need of repair, “I might have knowed it was the choir kicking up all that rumpus.  Heard the row clear up to the postoffice, and thought I’d come up to see if anyone was getting murdered.”

“Thought you’d be on the spot for once, did you, Rube?” inquired Hi Holler.  “Well, seeing you’re here, we might accommodate you, by getting up a murder, or a row, or something.  ’Twould be too bad to have nothing happen, seeing you are on hand for once.”

The choir joined heartily in the laugh on the constable, who waited till it had subsided and then said: 

“Well, what’s the matter with jailing all of you for disturbing the public peace.  There’s law for it—­’disturbin’ the public peace with strange sounds at late and unusual hours of the night.’”

“All right, constable,” said Cynthia, “I suppose you’ll drive us to jail in that rig o’ yourn.  I’d be willing to stay there six months for the sake o’ driving behind so spry a piece of horse-flesh as that.”

“’Tain’t the horseflesh she’s after, constable, it’s the driver.  Everyone ’round here knows how Cynthia dew admire you.”

“Professional jealousy is what’s at the bottom of this,” declared Kate, “the choir is jealous of Uncle Rube’s reputation as a singer, and Uncle Rube does not care for the choir’s new-fangled methods of singing.  Rivalry!  Rivalry!  That’s what the matter.”

“That’s right, Miss Kate,” squeaked the constable, “they’re jealous of my singing.  There ain’t one of ’em, with all their scaling, and do-re-mi-ing can touch me.  If I turned professional to-day, I’d make more’n all of ’em put together.”

“That’s cause they’d pay you to quit.  Ha, ha,” said Hi Holler.

And so the evening passed with the banter that invariably took place when Rube was of the party.  It was late when they left the Squire’s, the constable going along with them, and all singing merrily as birds on a summer morning.

David went out under the stars and smoked innumerable pipes, but they did not give their customary solace to-night.  There was an upheaval going on in his well regulated mind.  “Who was she?  What was the mystery about her?  How did a girl like that come to be tramping about the country looking for work?” Her manner of speaking, the very intonations of her voice, her choice of words, all proclaimed her from a different world from theirs.  He had noticed her hands, white and fragile, and her small delicate wrists.  They did not belong to a working woman.