." His
temper again slowly got the better of his wisdom. "What if I did pay two
hundred dollars for him?" he demanded; "it's harmless, ain't it? I'd a
sight better do that than some other things I might mention."

"I only said," she repeated impersonally, "that I would not throw stones
at a dog that had cost so much money."

"You're getting on the money now, are you? Going to start that song?
That'll come natural to you. When I first married you I couldn't see how
you were old Pompey's daughter, but I might have known it would come out.
I might have known you weren't the daughter of the meanest man in
Greenstream for nothing.... I suppose I'll hear about that money all the
rest of my life."

"Perhaps I will die, and then you will have no bother."

"That's a nice way to talk; that makes me out a fine figure of a
man ... with Mrs. Caley in the kitchen there, laying right over every
word; the old vinegar bottle."

"Don't you say another word about Mrs. Caley," Lattice declared
passionately; "she nursed my mother in her last sickness; and she took
care of me for years, when there wasn't anybody else hardly knew if I was
alive or not. If it wasn't for Mrs. Caley right now I guess I'd be in an
early grave."

Gordon Makimmon stood silenced by the last outburst. The tall, meager
figure of Mrs. Caley appeared upon the porch. She was clad in black
calico, and wore grey felt slippers. Her head was lowered, her closed lips
quivered, her bony fingers twitched. She never addressed a word to Gordon
directly; and, he decided, when she did, it would be monumental,
dumbfounding. The present moment was more than usually unpropitious; and,
discovering General Jackson at his heels, he picked the dog up and
departed for the stable, where he saw Sim Caley putting the horse into the
buggy.

"I thought I'd go over to the farm beyond the priest's," he answered
Gordon's query; "Tol'able's an awful slack hand with cattle."

"Your wife ought to run that place; she'd walk those steers around on a
snake fence."

Simeon Caley preserved a diplomatic silence. He, too, was long and lean.
He had eyes of the most innocent and tender blue imaginable in a
countenance seamed and scarred by protracted debauch, disease, abuse. It
was said of him that if all the liquor he had consumed were turned loose
on the mountain it would sweep Greenstream village to the farther end of
the valley.

His voice, like his eyes, was gentle. "Come right along, Gord;