“Mr. Westerfelt has had a lot of trouble,” began Mrs. Floyd, wondering what it could all be about; “everybody here is in sympathy with him.  We are all liable to mistakes; surely you can pardon him if—­”

“Not while I’m above ground,” shrieked the old woman.  She dropped her bag, then picked it up awkwardly, and started to leave by a door which opened into another room.  She burst into hysterical weeping when Mrs. Floyd caught her arm to detain her.  “Not while I’m alive an’ have my senses,” she went on, in sobs and piping tones.  “I’ll hound him to his grave.  I wouldn’t stay heer over night to save my life.  I’d ruther sleep in a hay-stack ur in a barn-loft.”

Harriet turned her white, rigid face to the window, and stood between the parted curtains as still as a statue.  Mrs. Floyd tried again to detain the old woman, but she flounced out of the room and thumped down-stairs.

The next morning a young girl came into the village by one of the mountain roads.  Her face was sad and troubled, and she looked as if she had walked a long distance.  She was poorly dressed, and her shoes were coarse and coated with dust, but her face was pretty and sweet.

In front of the meeting-house she stopped and sat down on a log near the road-side.  When people passed she would draw her sun-bonnet over her face and turn her head from them.  Suddenly she rose and trudged on to the post-office.

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.”