as a frown of resolution on his face, as
if he had fancied Death coming and had gone defiantly forth to meet
him.

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PART IX.

THE SOCIABLE AT DUDLEY'S: DANCING THE "WEEVILY WHEAT."

"Good night, Lettie!"
"Goodnight, Ben!"
(The moon is sinking at the west.)
"Good night, my sweetheart." Once again
The parting kiss, while comrades wait
Impatient at the roadside gate,
And the red moon sinks beyond the west.

THE SOCIABLE AT DUDLEY'S.

I.

John Jennings was not one of those men who go to a donation party with
fifty cents' worth of potatoes and eat and carry away two dollars' worth
of turkey and jelly-cake. When he drove his team around to the front
door for Mrs. Jennings, he had a sack of flour and a quarter of a fine
fat beef in his sleigh and a five-dollar bill in his pocket-book, a
contribution to Elder Wheat's support.

Milton, his twenty-year-old son, was just driving out of the yard,
seated in a fine new cutter, drawn by a magnificent gray four-year-old
colt. He drew up as Mr. Jennings spoke.

"Now be sure and don't never leave him a minute untied. And see that the
harness is all right. Do you hear, Milton?"

"Yes, I hear!" answered the young fellow, rather impatiently, for he
thought himself old enough and big enough to look out for himself.

"Don't race, will y', Milton?" was his mother's anxious question from
the depth of her shawls.

"Not if I can help it," was his equivocal response as he chirruped to
Marc Antony. The grand brute made a rearing leap that brought a cry
from the mother and a laugh from the young driver, and swung into the
road at a flying pace. The night was clear and cold, the sleighing
excellent, and the boy's heart was full of exultation.

It was a joy just to control such a horse as he drew rein over that
night. Large, with the long, lithe body of a tiger and the broad, clear
limbs of an elk, the gray colt strode away up the road, his hoofs
flinging a shower of snow over the dasher. The lines were like steel
rods; the sleigh literally swung by them; the traces hung slack inside
the thills. The bells clashed out a swift clamor; the runners seemed to
hiss over the snow as the duck-breasted cutter swung round the curves
and softly rose and fell along the undulating road.

On either hand the snow stood billowed against the fences and amid the
wide fields of corn-stalks bleached