vigorously replaced, so that stray strands were apt
to be tossing about her eyes--fearless, direct blue eyes, that looked out
of her square, wrinkled, weather-beaten little face with the sincere gaze
of an urchin. Back of her chair lay a bundle of white-oak splits for use
in her by-trade of basket-weaver; above them hung bundles of drying
herbs, for Nancy was a sick-nurse and a bit of an herb-doctor. She had
made a hard and a more or less losing fight against poverty--the men folk
of these hardy, valiant little women seem predestined to be shiftless.

It came back to Judith dimly as she looked at them--she was in a mood to
remember such things--that her uncle had courted Nancy Card when these
two were young people, that they had quarrelled, both had married, reared
families, and been widowed; and they were quarrelling still! Acrimonious
debate with Nancy was evidently such sweet pain that old Jephthah sought
every opportunity for it, and the sudden shower in the vicinity of her
cabin had offered him an excuse to-day.

Nancy did not confine her practice to what she would have called humans,
but doctored a horse or a cow with equal success. One cold spring a
little chicken had its feet frozen in the wet barnyard so badly that it
lost one of them, and Nancy, who had taken the poor mite into the house
and nursed it till she loved it, constructed for it a wooden leg
consisting of a small, light peg strapped to the stump. And thereafter
Nicodemus, a rooster who must now belie the name since he could not cling
to a perch with his single foot, became an institution in the Card
household.

Jephthah Turrentine was a natural bone-setter, and was sent for far and
near to reduce a dislocation or bandage a broken limb. In the pursuit of
this which came to be almost a profession, he acquired a good knowledge
of tending upon the sick, and the bitterness of rival practitioners was
added to the score between him and Nancy. The case of Nicodemus furnished
the man with a chance to call the woman a chicken doctor, and the name
appealing to the humorous side of mountain character stuck to her,
greatly to her disgust.

Aunt Nancy's dooryard was famous for its flowers, being a riot of pied
bloom from March till December. Even now fire-in-the-bush and bridal
wreath made gay the borders.

"Good land, Jude Barrier!" called Nancy herself. "You're as wet as a
drownded rat. 'Light and come in."

Old Turrentine permitted his niece to clamber f