tour through all that was new
or had changed, Dave had brought his horse and Loretta's to the gate.
No, he wouldn't come in and "rest a spell"--"they must be gittin' along
home," he said shortly. But old Judd Tolliver insisted that he should
stay to dinner, and Dave tied the horses to the fence and walked to the
porch, not lifting his eyes to June. Straightway the girl went into the
house co help her step-mother with dinner, but the old woman told her
she "reckoned she needn't start in yit"--adding in the querulous tone
June knew so well:

"I've been mighty po'ly, an' thar'll be a mighty lot fer you to do now."
So with this direful prophecy in her ears the girl hesitated. The old
woman looked at her closely.

"Ye ain't a bit changed," she said.

They were the words Loretta had used, and in the voice of each was the
same strange tone of disappointment. June wondered: were they sorry
she had not come back putting on airs and fussed up with ribbons and
feathers that they might hear her picked to pieces and perhaps do some
of the picking themselves? Not Loretta, surely--but the old step-mother!
June left the kitchen and sat down just inside the door. The Red Fox and
two other men had sauntered up from the store and all were listening to
his quavering chat:

"I seed a vision last night, and thar's trouble a-comin' in these
mountains. The Lord told me so straight from the clouds. These railroads
and coal-mines is a-goin' to raise taxes, so that a pore man'll have to
sell his hogs and his corn to pay 'em an' have nothin' left to keep
him from starvin' to death. Them police-fellers over thar at the Gap is
a-stirrin' up strife and a-runnin' things over thar as though the earth
was made fer 'em, an' the citizens ain't goin' to stand it. An' this
war's a-comin' on an' thar'll be shootin' an' killin' over thar an' over
hyeh. I seed all this devilment in a vision last night, as shore as I'm
settin' hyeh."

Old Judd grunted, shifted his huge shoulders, parted his mustache and
beard with two fingers and spat through them.

"Well, I reckon you didn't see no devilment. Red, that you won't take a
hand in, if it comes."

The other men laughed, but the Red Fox looked meek and lowly.

"I'm a servant of the Lord. He says do this, an' I does it the best
I know how. I goes about a-preachin' the word in the wilderness an'
a-healin' the sick with soothin' yarbs and sech."

"An' a-makin' compacts with the devil," said old Judd shortly,