peer furtively at the sun, before he
whipped up his horse.

"Git along!" he admonished her earnestly, then, "Git along--you!
Nobody believes in ghosts--leastwise, I don't. But they ain't no sense
nor reason in just a-killin' time on the road, neither. And I ain't
one to tempt Providence--not to any great nor damagin' extent, I
ain't!"

And yet in spite of all the uneasiness which the combination of the
dark house and the persistent image of the little, worn-out
stone-cutter kept alive in him, in so far as Young Denny's team of
horses was concerned, and the scanty rest of the stock which the boy
had left in his care, Old Jerry kept strictly to the letter of his
agreement. At the most it meant no more than a little readjustment of
his daily schedule, which he high-handedly rearranged to suit his
better convenience.

But all the rest which he had promised so fervidly to carry out--the
message which he had meant to deliver the very next morning after the
boy's departure and the explanation of Young Denny's bruised face,
even a diplomatic tender of the damp wad of bills which Denny had
pushed in his hand--had somehow been allowed to wait. For it had
proved to be anything but the admirably simple thing it had seemed to
the old man when he had volubly acquiesced to the plan.

He had forgotten it that first morning. With the well-planned opening
sentence fairly trembling upon his tongue-tip when he opened the door,
the whole thing had been swept utterly from his mind. And in the press
of events that followed he never so much as thought of it again for
days. When the memory of it did return, a week later, somehow he found
it almost impossible to introduce the subject--at least impossible to
introduce it gracefully.

That was one of the reasons for his failure to execute the mission
entrusted to him. The other reason, which was far weightier, so far as
Old Jerry was concerned, was even harder to define. He blamed it
directly to the attitude of the girl with the tumbled yellow hair and
blue eyes, which were never quite the same shade of purple. More than
a small proportion of the remarks which he had prepared beforehand to
deliver to her had consisted of reproof--not too harsh, but for all
that a trifle severe, maybe--of her hasty and utterly unfair judgment
of Young Denny. That, he had assured himself, was only just and
merited, and could only prove, eventually, to have been for the best.
But she never gave him a chance to