cleared out too, my eldest
son as was with me here has quo'lled with me and reckons to set up
a rival business agin me. No," he said, still more meditatively and
deliberately; "it wasn't to come back to the comforts of my own home and
family that I faced round on Heavy Tree Hill, I reckon."

As the woman, for certain reasons, had no desire to check this
auspicious and unlooked for confidence, she waited patiently. Hays
remained silent for an instant, warming his hands before the fire, and
then looked up interrogatively.

"A professor of religion, ma'am, or under conviction?"

"Not exactly," said the lady smiling.

"Excuse me, but in spite of your fine clothes I reckoned you had a
serious look just now. A reader of Scripture, may be?"

"I know the Bible."

"You remember when the angel with the flamin' sword appeared unto Saul
on the road to Damascus?"

"Yes."

"It mout hev been suthin' in that style that stopped me," he said slowly
and tentatively. "Though nat'rally I didn't SEE anything, and only had
the queer feelin'. It might hev been THAT shied my mare off the track."

"But Saul was up to some wickedness, wasn't he?" said the lady
smilingly, "while YOU were simply going somewhere on business?"

"Yes," said Hays thoughtfully, "but my BUSINESS might hev seemed like
persecution. I don't mind tellin' you what it was if you'd care to
listen. But mebbe you're tired. Mebbe you want to retire. You know," he
went on with a sudden hospitable outburst, "you needn't be in any
hurry to go; we kin take care of you here to-night, and it'll cost you
nothin'. And I'll send you on with my sleigh in the mornin'. Per'aps
you'd like suthin' to eat--a cup of tea--or--I'll call Zuleika;" and he
rose with an expression of awkward courtesy.

But the lady, albeit with a self-satisfied sparkle in her dark
eyes, here carelessly assured him that Zuleika had already given her
refreshment, and, indeed, was at that moment preparing her own room for
her. She begged he would not interrupt his interesting story.

Hays looked relieved.

"Well, I reckon I won't call her, for what I was goin' to say ain't
exackly the sort o' thin' for an innocent, simple sort o' thing like her
to hear--I mean," he interrupted himself hastily--"that folks of more
experience of the world like you and me don't mind speakin' of--I'm
sorter takin' it for granted that you're a married woman, ma'am."

The lady, who had regarded him with a sudden rigidity, here