“Oh, it’s all one.  She doesn’t want to, that is enough.”

“Well, she’s a fool if she doesn’t want to, an’ I’ll say it to her face.  If thar’s a better lookin’ man around here, I’d like to see him, or a better worker.  What have the Merryweathers to be so set up about, I’d like to know?  And that gal without even a father to her name that she can call her own!”

“You mustn’t—­I won’t stand it any longer.”

“Well, it’s for yo’ good, I reckon.  If yo’ own mother can’t take yo’ side, I’d like to know who’s goin’ to do it?”

“I don’t want anybody to take my side.  She’s got a right not to marry me.”

“I ain’t saying’ she ain’t, an’ it’s a mighty good thing for you that she’s sech a plum fool as not to want to.  ’Twould be the worst news I’d ever heard if she’d been minded to have you.  I’d move heaven an’ earth to keep you from marryin’ her, an’ if the good Lord has done it instead of me, I’m thankful enough to Him for His trouble.”

Rising from the table, Abel pushed his untasted food aside with a gesture of loathing.  A week ago he had been interested in the minor details of life; to-night he felt that they bored him profoundly.

“If you knew what you were saying you’d hold your tongue,” he retorted angrily.

“Ain’t you goin’ to eat yo’ supper?” inquired Sarah anxiously, “that herrin’ is real nice and brown.”

“I don’t want anything.  I’m not hungry.”

“Mebbe you’d like one of the brandied peaches I’m savin’ for Christmas?”

“No, I’m dead beat.  I’ll go up to sleep pretty soon.”

“Do you want a fire?  I can lay one in a minute.”

He shook his head, not impatiently, but as one to whom brandied peaches and wood fires are matters of complete indifference.

“I’ve got to see about something in the stable first.  Then I’ll go to bed.”

Taking down a lantern from a nail by the door, he went out, as was his nightly habit, to look at his grey mare Hannah.  When he came in again and stumbled up the narrow staircase to his room, he found that Sarah had been before him and kindled a blaze from resinous pine on the two bricks in the fireplace.  At the sound of his step, she entered with an armful of pine boughs, which she tossed to the flames.

“I reckon the cracklin’ will make you feel mo’ comfortable,” she observed.  “Thar ain’t anything like a lightwood fire to drive away the misery.”

“It does sound friendly,” he responded.

For a moment she hesitated, groping apparently for some topic of conversation which would divert his mind from one subject that engrossed him.

“Archie’s just come in,” she remarked at last, “an’ he walked up with old Uncle Toby, who said he’d seen a ha’nt in the dusk over at Poplar Spring.  I don’t see how Mrs. Gay an’ Miss Kesiah can endure to live thar.”

“Oh, they’re just darkies’ tales—­nobody believes in them any more than in conjuring and witches.”