“I guess that’s so,” replied Aunt Mollie, “but it don’t seem like it could be so hard as it is here.  I tell Mr. Matthews we’ve clean forgot the ways of civilized folks; altogether, though, I suppose we’ve done as well as most, and we hadn’t ought to complain.”

The old scholar looked at the sturdy figure in its plain calico dress; at the worn hands, busy with their homely task; and the patient, kindly face, across which time had ploughed many a furrow, in which to plant the seeds of character and worth.  He thought of other women who had sat with him on hotel verandas, at fashionable watering places; women gowned in silks and laces; women whose soft hands knew no heavier task than the filmy fancy work they toyed with, and whose greatest care, seemingly, was that time should leave upon their faces no record of the passing years.  “And this is the stuff,” said he to himself, “that makes possible the civilization that produces them.”  Aloud, he said, “Do you ever talk of going back to your old home?”

“No, sir, not now;” she rested her wet hands idly on the edge of the pan of potatoes, and turned her face toward the clump of pines.  “We used to think we’d go back sometime; seemed like at first I couldn’t stand it; then the children come, and every time we laid one of them over there I thought less about leavin’, until now we never talk about it no more.  Then there was our girl, too, Mr. Howitt.  No, sir, we won’t never leave these hills now.”

“Oh, you had a daughter, too?  I understood from Mr. Matthews that your children were all boys.”

Aunt Mollie worked a few moments longer in silence, then arose and turned toward the house.  “Yes, sir, there was a girl; she’s buried under that biggest pine you see off there a little to one side.  We—­we—­don’t never talk about her.  Mr. Matthews can’t stand it.  Seems like he ain’t never been the same since—­since—­it happened.  ’Tain’t natural for him to be so rough and short; he’s just as good and kind inside as any man ever was or could be.  He’s real taken with you, Mr. Howitt, and I’m mighty glad you’re goin’ to stop a spell, for it will do him good.  If it hadn’t been for Sammy Lane runnin’ in every day or two, I don’t guess he could have stood it at all.  I sure don’t know what we’ll do now that she’s goin’ away.  Then there’s—­there’s—­that at the ranch in Mutton Hollow; but I guess I’d better not try to tell you about that.  I wish Mr. Matthews would, though; maybe he will.  You know so much more than us; I know most you could help us or tell us about things.

CHAPTER V.

“Jest nobody.”

After the midday meal, while walking about the place, Mr. Howitt found a well worn path; it led him to the group of pines not far from the house, where five rough head stones marked the five mounds placed side by side.  A little apart from these was another mound, alone.