a woman was with him.  It all comes, I reckon, of Mr. Jonathan having been found dead at the spring, and you know how the darkies catch onto any silly fancy about the dead walking.  I don’t believe much in ha’nts myself, though great-grandma has seen many a one in her day, and all the servants at Jordan’s Journey will never rest quiet.  I’ve always wondered if your mother and Miss Kesiah were ever frightened by the stories the darkies tell?” For a moment she paused, and then added softly, “It was all so different, they say, when the Jordans were living.”

Again the phrase which had begun to irritate him!  Who were these dead and gone Jordans whose beneficent memory still inhabited the house they had built?

“I don’t think my mother would care for such stories,” he replied after a minute.  “She has never mentioned them in her letters.”

“Of course nobody really puts faith in them, but I never pass the spring, if I can help it, after the sun has gone down.  It makes me feel so dreadfully creepy.”

“The root of this gossip, I suppose, lies in the general dislike of my uncle?”

“Perhaps—­I’m not sure,” she responded, and he felt that her rustic simplicity possessed a charm above the amenities of culture.  “The old clergyman—­that was before Mr. Mullen’s day—­when we all went to the church over at Piping Tree—­used to say that the mercy of God would have to exceed his if He was ever going to redeem him.  I remember hearing him tell grandma when I was a child that there were a few particulars in which he couldn’t answer with certainty for God, and that old Mr. Jonathan Gay was one of ’em.  ’God Almighty will have to find His own way in this matter,’ he used to declare, ‘for I wash my hands of it.’  I’m sorry, sir,” she finished contritely, “I forgot he was your own blood relation.”

In the spirit of this contrition, she changed the basket back again to her left arm; and perceiving his advantage, Gay acted upon it with his accustomed alacrity.

“Don’t apologize, please, I am glad I have this from your lips—­not from a stranger’s.”

Under the spell of her beauty, he was aware of a pleasurable sensation, as though the pale rose of the orchard grass had gone to his head and coloured his vision.  There was a thrill in feeling her large, soft arm brushing his sleeve, in watching the rise and fall of her bosom under her tight calico dress.

“I shall always know that we were friends—­good friends, from the first,” he resumed after a minute.

“You are very kind, sir,” she answered, “this is my path over the stile and it is growin’ late—­Tobias’s mother will surely give him a whippin’.  I hope you don’t mind my havin’ gathered these persimmons on your land,” she concluded, with an honesty which was relieved from crudeness by her physical dignity, “they are hardly fit to eat because there has been so little frost yet.”

“Well, I’m sorry for that, Miss Keren-happuch, or shall it be Blossom?”