he prepared to take his departure in the
wake of the pink petticoats that had hurried across the street.

Then for another hour Rose Mary worked alone in the milk-house,
humming a happy little tune to herself as she pounded and patted and
moulded away. Every now and then she would glance down Providence Road
toward Boliver, far away around the bend, and when at last she saw old
Gray and her rider turn behind the hill she began to straighten things
preparatory to a return to the Briars. In the world-old drama of
creation which is being ever enacted anew in the heart of a woman, it
is well that the order of evolution is reversed and only after the
bringing together and marshaling of forces unsuspected even by herself
comes the command for light on the darkness of the situation. Rose
Mary was as yet in the dusk of the night which waited for the voice of
God on the waters, and there was yet to come the dawn of her first
day.

And in the semi-mist of the dream she finally ascended the hill toward
the Briars with a bucket in one hand and a sunbonnet swinging in the
other. But coming down the trail she met one of the little tragedies
of life in the person of Stonewall Jackson, who was dragging
dejectedly across the yard from the direction of the back door with
Mrs. Sniffer and all five little dogs trailing in his wake. And as if
in sympathy with his mood, the frisky little puppies were waddling
along decorously while Sniffer poked her nose affectionately into the
little brown hand which was hanging without its usual jaunty swing.
Rose Mary took in the situation at a glance and sank down under one of
the tall lilac bushes and looked up with adoring eyes as Stonie came
and took a spread-legged stand before her.

"What's the matter, honey-sweet?" she asked quickly.

"Rose Mamie, it's a lie that I don't know whether I told or not. It's
so curious that I don't hardly think God knows what I did," and the
General's face was set and white with his distress.

"Tell me, Stonie, maybe I can help you decide," said Rose Mary with
quick sympathy.

"It was one of them foolish turkey hens and Tobe sat down on her and
a whole nest of most hatched little turkeys. Didn't nobody know she
was a-setting in the old wagon but Aunt Amandy, and we was a-climbing
into it for a boat on the stormy sea, we was playing like. It was
mighty bad on Tobe's pants, too, for he busted all the eggs. Looks
like he just always finds some kind of smell and fal