have speech with your uncle. He was at Aunt
Nancy's the other day and we had some talk; he knows more about what I'm
aiming at up here then I do. A man of his age and good sense can be a
sight of help to me."

"Uncle Jep will be proud to do anything he can," said Judith softly.
"Won't you come in and set awhile?"

She dreaded that the invitation might hurry him away, and now made hasty
use of the first diversion that offered. He had broken a blooming switch
from the peach-tree beneath which he stood, and she reproached him
fondly.

"Look at you. Now there won't never be no peaches where them blossoms
was."

He twisted the twig in his fingers and smiled down at her, conscious of a
singular and personal kindness between them, aware too, for the first
time, that she was young, beautiful, and a woman; before, she had been
merely an individual to him.

"My mother used to say that to me when I would break fruit blows," he
said meditatively. "But father always pruned his trees when they were in
blossom--they can't any of them bear a peach for every bloom."

She shook her head as though giving up the argument, since it was after
all a matter of sentiment. Her dark, rich-coloured beauty glowed its
contrast to his cool, northern type.

At present neither spoke more than a few syllables of the spiritual
language of the other, yet so powerful was the attraction between them
that even Creed began to feel it, while Judith, the primitive woman, all
given over to instinct, promptly laid about her for something to hold and
interest him.

"The young folks is a-goin' to get up a play-party at our house sometime
soon," she hazarded. "I reckon you wouldn't come to any such as that,
would you?"

"I'd be proud to come," returned Creed at once. But he spoiled it by
adding, "I've got to get acquainted with people all over again, it's so
long since I lived here; and looks like I'm not a very good mixer."

"Will you sure come?" inquired Judith insistently, as she saw him
preparing to depart.

"I sure will."

"You could stay over night in your own house then--ain't you comin' back,
ever, to live there?"

"Why, yes, I reckon I might stay there over night, but it's too far from
the main road for a justice's office."

"Well, if you're going to try to sleep in the house, it ort to be opened
up and sunned a little; you better let me have the key now," observed
Judith, assuming airs of proprietorship over his inept masculinity.

Sm