s much right here as any of us, Abel, and she's coming to
say it, I guess."

The voice which spoke was unlike a Western voice. It was deep and full and
slow, with an organ-like quality. It was in good-keeping with the tall,
spare body and large, fine, rugged face of the woman to whom it belonged.
She sat in a rocking-chair, but did not rock, her fingers busy with the
knitting-needles, her feet planted squarely on the home-made hassock at
her feet.

The old man waited for a minute in a painful silence, then he turned
slowly round, and, with tight-pressed lips, looked at the woman in the
rocking-chair. If it had been any one else who had "talked back" at him,
he would have made quick work of them, for he was of that class of tyrant
who pride themselves on being self-made, and have an undue respect for
their own judgment and importance. But the woman who had ventured to
challenge his cold-blooded remarks about his dead son's wife, now
hastening over the snow to the house her husband had left under a cloud
eight years before, had no fear of him, and, maybe, no deep regard for
him. He respected her, as did all who knew her--a very reticent,
thoughtful, busy being, who had been like a well of comfort to so many
that had drunk and passed on out of her life, out of time and time's
experiences. Seventy-nine years saw her still upstanding, strong, full of
work, and fuller of life's knowledge. It was she who had sent the horses
and sleigh for Cassy when the old man, having read the letter that Cassy
had written him, said that she could "freeze at the station" for all of
him. Aunt Kate had said nothing then, but, when the time came, by her
orders the sleigh and horses were at the station; and the old man had made
no direct protest, for she was the one person he had never dominated nor
bullied. If she had only talked, he would have worn her down, for he was
fond of talking, and it was said by those who were cynical and incredulous
about him that he had gone to prayer-meetings, had been a local preacher,
only to hear his own voice. Probably, if there had been any politics in
the West in his day, he would have been a politician, though it would have
been too costly for his taste, and religion was very cheap; it enabled him
to refuse to join in many forms of expenditure, on the ground that he "did
not hold by such things."

In Aunt Kate, the sister of his wife, dead so many years ago, he had found
a spirit stronger than his own. He v