d, and the very spring of the earth beneath his feet was
repeated in the measured beating of his blood. The land could not warp
or break him, as it does so many, for he belonged to it as essentially
and as completely as it belonged to him. Dimly the little town girl
beside him felt this, and dimly she hoped that she, too, might prove
to be of the same mould.

"Look at the barn, and the stables, and the corncrib," he was saying.
"See how they're all built? Hand-hewn logs chinked with plaster.
Great-granddad built them all, helped by his two slaves. That's all
the slaves he had, just two and one of 'em was Unc' Zenas's
grandfather. Everything's strong and sound as the day he finished it."

"That one looks newer," said Annie, pointing.

Wesley looked a little shamefaced, as does every typical Anglo-Saxon
discovered in sentiment.

"I built that," he confessed. "It's a chicken house. Somehow I didn't
want to go down to the sawmill and get planks and build with 'em
'mongst all these old log things. So I got the logs out in the woods
and build same as great-granddad. Maybe it was foolish, but I couldn't
help it."

"It wasn't foolish; it was nice," she affirmed.

She perched on the tongue of a wagon while he mended the disker,
dividing her attention between him and the live things of the
barnyard. A string of decorative white ducks marched in single file
about the edge of the cow pound. Beyond them a proud red-wattled cock
paraded and purred among his harem of trim hens, now and then
disturbed in his dignity by the darting nervousness of a pair of
malicious guineas, acknowledged brigands of the feathered tribes. Trim
iridescent pigeons toddled about on their coral feet, looking for
leftovers from the chickens' table.

"Say, Wes, I should think you'd have a dog," she said suddenly. "A
nice big dog lazying round here would sort of complete it."

He bent suddenly over his disker and gave the nut he was working on a
mighty twist, but he had tossed aside his hat, and she could see the
sudden jump and darkening of his menacing vein.

"I had a dog," he said in a low voice, "but he died."

A curious restraint fell on them, and for the first time Annie felt
herself an alien, a stranger, far adrift from familiar shores.
She shivered in the light wind.

"You cold? You better go in the house and get something round you,"
Wes said to her.

"I guess I'd better." And she left him hammering.

In the house she found Aunt Dolcey