east had not
yet taken any hint of rose flush, but held that pallid line of greyish
white that precedes sunrise.

She clambered across the Gulch, her tired horse stumbling with drooping
head over the familiar stones, and rode slowly up to the home place. The
huddle of buildings looked gaunt, deserted, inhospitable. There was light
here enough to see the life which in daytime made all homelike, but which
now, quenched and hidden, left all desolate, forbidding. As sleep takes
on the semblance of death, so the sleeping house took on the semblance of
desertion. The chickens were still humped on their perches in the trees,
the cows had not come up to the milking-pen, their calves lay in a little
bunch by the fence fast asleep. To the girl's heavy heart it seemed a
spot utterly forlorn in the chill, sad, ironic half-light of the
slow-coming morning.

She rode directly to the barn, unsaddled, and put her horse out. As she
was coming back past her uncle's cabin, she saw the old man himself
sitting in the door. He was fully dressed; his hat lay on the doorstone
beside him, and against the jamb leaned Old Sister. He looked up at her
with a sort of indifferent, troubled gaze.

"So you got back, Jude," he said quietly.

"Yes, Uncle Jep," she returned as quietly.

He made no comment on her riding skirt which she held up away from the
drenching dew. He asked no questions as to where she had been, or what
her errand. She noted that he looked old and worn.

"I'm mighty sorry it happened," he began abruptly, quite as though he was
continuing a conversation which they had intermitted but a few moments,
"mighty sorry; but I don't see no other way. I've studied a heap on it.
Folks that stirs up trouble, gits trouble. I----"

He broke off and sat brooding.

"I'm glad you ain't mad at me for the part I've tuck in it," Judith began
finally.

"Don't tell me." He raised a hasty, protesting hand. "I don't want to
know nothin' about it. All is, _I_ couldn't have things according to my
ruthers, and they had to go as they must. Hit ain't what a man means that
makes the differ--hit's what he does that we count. Them that stirs up
trouble, finds trouble."

"I reckon so, Uncle Jep," said the girl, drooping as she stood.

"They ain't been a roof between my head and the sky sence I left this
house," the old man's big voice rumbled on monotonously, hollowly. "I
tromped the ridges over to'ds Yeller Old Bald. I left mankind and their
works be