k quick as we can with all the plates ye need."

Together they stepped out into the soft dusk of the summer night,
followed by the narrowed gaze of Blatch Turrentine's grey eyes.

Chapter VIII

On the Doorstone

Behind them the play was resumed in the lighted room; the whining of the
fiddle, the thud and stamp of many feet, came to them softened and
refined by a little distance. They were suddenly drawn together in that
intimacy of two who leave the company and the lights on a special
expedition. Judith made an impatient mental effort to release the
incident of Huldah and the kiss, which had so unreasonably irritated
her.

"If we was to go acrosst fields hit would be a heap better," she advised
softly, and they moved through the odorous, myriad-voiced darkness of the
midsummer night, side by side, without speech, for a time. Then as Creed
halted at a dim, straggling barrier which crossed their course and laid
down a rail fence partially that she might the more easily get over in
her white frock, she returned to the tormenting subject once more,
opening obliquely:

"You and Huldy Spiller is old friends I reckon. Don't you think she's a
powerful pretty girl?"

"Mighty pretty," echoed Creed absently. All girls were of an even
prettiness to him, and Huldah Spiller was a pleasant little thing. He was
wondering what he had done back there in the play-room that had set them
all against him.

"Her and Wade is goin' to be wedded come September," put in Judith
jealously.

"Yo' cousin will be getting a mighty fine wife."

The mountain man is apt to make his comments on the marriages of his
friends with dignified formality, and Creed uttered the accustomed phrase
without heat or enthusiasm; but it seemed to Judith that he might have
said less--or more.

"Well, I never did like red hair," the girl managed to get out finally;
"but I reckon hit's better than old black stuff like mine."

"My mother's hair was sorter sandy," Creed answered in his gentle,
tolerant fashion. "Mine favours it." And he had not the wit to add that
dark hair, however, pleased him best.

Judith stepped beside him for some moments in mortified silence.
Evidently he was green wood and could by none of her old methods be
kindled. Then, their eyes becoming accustomed to the darkness, they came
out into a modified twilight in the clearing about the Bonbright house.
"You better unlock the door and go in first," suggested Judith, in a
depress