She was tall, gaunt, and withered; in spite of her evident years, her twisted hair was still dark and full, and her eyes bright and piercing; her complexion and teeth had long since succumbed to the vitiating effects of frontier cookery, and her lips were stained with the yellow juice of a brier-wood pipe she held in her mouth.  The ostler had explained their intrusion, and veiled their character under the vague epithet of a “hunting party,” and was now evidently describing them personally.  In his new-found philosophy the fact that the interest of his hostess seemed to be excited only by the names of his companions, that he himself was carelessly, and even deprecatingly, alluded to as the “stranger from Eagle’s” by the ostler, and completely overlooked by the old woman, gave him no concern.

“You’ll have to talk to Zenobia yourself.  Dod rot ef I’m gine to interfere.  She knows Hennicker’s ways, and if she chooses to take in transients it ain’t no funeral o’ mine.  Zeenie!  You, Zeenie!  Look yer!”

A tall, lazy-looking, handsome girl appeared on the threshold of the next room, and with a hand on each door-post slowly swung herself backwards and forwards, without entering.  “Well, Maw?”

The old woman briefly and unalluringly pictured the condition of the travellers.

“Paw ain’t here,” began the girl doubtfully, “and—­How dy, Dick! is that you?” The interruption was caused by her recognition of the ostler, and she lounged into the room.  In spite of a skimp, slatternly gown, whose straight skirt clung to her lower limbs, there was a quaint, nymph-like contour to her figure.  Whether from languor, ill-health, or more probably from a morbid consciousness of her own height, she moved with a slightly affected stoop that had become a habit.  It did not seem ungraceful to Hale, already attracted by her delicate profile, her large dark eyes, and a certain weird resemblance she had to some half-domesticated dryad.

“That’ll do, Maw,” she said, dismissing her parent with a nod.  “I’ll talk to Dick.”

As the door closed on the old woman, Zenobia leaned her hands on the back of a chair, and confronted the admiring eyes of Dick with a goddess-like indifference.

“Now wot’s the use of your playin’ this yer game on me, Dick?  Wot’s the good of your ladlin’ out that hogwash about huntin’?  HUNTIN’!  I’ll tell yer the huntin’ you-uns hev been at!  You’ve been huntin’ George Lee and his boys since an hour before sun up.  You’ve been followin’ a blind trail up to the Ridge, until the snow got up and hunted you right here!  You’ve been whoopin’ and yellin’ and circus-ridin’ on the roads like ez yer wos Comanches, and frightening all the women folk within miles—­that’s your huntin’!  You’ve been climbin’ down Paw’s old slide at last, and makin’ tracks for here to save the skins of them condemned government horses of the Kempany!  And that’s your huntin’!”