“What are you going to do?”

“Going to see him.”

“Not now; why—­”

“I will see him.  Let me alone; don’t try to stop me!”

“You surely would not go to the stable!  He—­”

“I’d go anywhere to see him.  I don’t care what people say; I’m going to see him.”

As Harriet bent to fasten her shoes, Mrs. Floyd touched her.

“Daughter, are you engaged to Mr. Westerfelt?”

Harriet did not look up.  She still bent over her shoes, but the strings lay motionless in her fingers.

“No, he intimated he couldn’t marry me, on—­on account of my misfortune.  Oh, don’t let’s talk about it.  He and I understand each other.  He loves me, but we’re not engaged.”

Mrs. Floyd leaned against the mantel-piece.  Her face had become hard and stern.  Harriet started to leave the room, but Mrs. Floyd suddenly stepped between her and the door.

“He intimated that that would keep him from marrying you?  My Lord—­the coward!”

“Mother, don’t—­don’t say that!”

“I thought he was a man!  Why, he is lower than a brute.”

Harriet disengaged herself from her mother’s grasp, and passed on to the door.  She turned on the threshold.

“I have no time to quarrel with you about him,” she said, with a sigh; “you can have your opinion, nothing on earth will change mine.  He loves me.  I am going to see him now, and nothing you can say or do will prevent me.”

Her shoes rattled loosely on the bare floor and on the stairs as she went down to the street.

During the night the sycamore-trees had strewn the ground with half-green, half-yellow leaves, and the tops of the fences were white with frost.  Martin Worthy was taking down the shutters at the store and calling through the window to his wife, who was unscrewing them on the inside.  A farmer had left his team in front of the bar, and she saw him taking his morning drink at the counter and heard Buck Hillhouse giving him an exaggerated report of the visit of the Whitecaps.  The eastern sky was yellowing, and a peak of the tallest mountain cut a brown gash in the coming sunlight.  At the fence in front of Bufford Webb’s cottage a cow stood lowing for admittance, and a milking-pail hung on the gate.

As Harriet passed, Mrs. Webb came out with a bucket of “slop” for the pig in a pen near the fence.  She rested it on the top rail to speak to Harriet, but the hungry animal made such a noise that she hastened first to empty the vessel into the trough.

“Good-morning,” she said, going quickly to the gate and wiping her hands on her apron; “did you-uns heer the racket last night?”

“Yes,” answered Harriet.

“I didn’t sleep a wink.  We could see ’em frum the kitchen winder.  It’s a outrage, but I’m glad they did no rail harm.”

The girl passed on.  She found Washburn in front of the stable oiling a buggy.  He had placed a notched plank under an axle and was rapidly twirling a wheel.