elf. Are
you glad to see me?"

"Of course," said Judith.

"I wish you wouldn't swing that milk can so vigorously. I think a
cousin might be allowed to ask if you are glad to see him without
being in danger of having to take the same medicine Tom Harbison had
to swallow. I've come home on a rather sad mission, in a way, and
still I wanted to see my little cousin so much I can't help making a
kind of lark of it. I am really worried very much, and should go to
Buck Hill immediately, but if you don't mind, I'll hang around while
you get the seven o'clock dinners packed and then help you carry
them."

Judith did not mind at all. "I hope nobody at Buck Hill is ill," she
said.

"No, but my father is in a great stew over old Cousin Ann Peyton. She
is lost and he seems to feel I can find her. Why, I don't know, if he
and Big Josh can't, even with the help of the marshal."

"I am sure you can," declared Judith demurely, and Jeff thought
happily how agreeable it was to have someone besides a father have
such faith in his ability.

"You must come in and wait," insisted Judith. "There is a fire in the
dining-room. It is cold for September and a little fire towards
evening is pleasant."

Jeff entered the home of his newly claimed cousin with a feeling of
some embarrassment. It seemed strange that he had lived on the
adjoining farm all his early years and that this was the first time he
had been in the Bucks' house. There was a chaste New England charm
about the dining-room that appealed to him. It was a fit background
for the tall, white-haired old lady who was busily engaged in setting
the table as the young people entered. She was smiling and humming a
gay little minuet, as she straightened table mats and arranged forks
and knives in exactly the proper relation to each other and the
teaspoons.

Stooping and placing wood on the fire was an old negro man. His back
was strangely familiar to Jeff and there was something about the lines
of the white-haired old lady that made him stare. She was like Cousin
Ann but couldn't be she. Not only the snowy hair and the simple,
straight skirt of her gown were not those of the lost cousin, but the
fact that she was engaged in household duties was even more convincing
of a case of mistaken identity. It was old Billy that had flashed
through his mind, when he noticed the fire maker, but old Billy never
engaged in any form of domestic labor any more than his mistress.

"Someone to see