I had proved myself a good and faithful
comrade and worker for him ever since I could stand on my feet.

"I just want him to answer me that," I said to myself, and went to bed
in the berth at six-thirty and didn't wake up any more until I was at
Louisville at eleven. I had been in New York two weeks, and I needed
sleep. The interval between that time and three o'clock, which was the
hour that I stood before mother and her latest rose-crocheted mat, I
spent in strengthening and fortifying my position.

"Why, Betty!" said mother, keeping the place open in the magazine she
was crocheting from, but kissing me so tenderly that I knew she
suspected something had happened to me.

"I came home because I had to, and I'll tell you about it just as soon
as I come back from out at Sam's, where I have to go as fast as I can on
business," I said, as I hurried out to Eph for Redwheels and up to my
room for my corduroys and middy blouse. I knew Sam would get his new
family off at the station at the cross-roads. I wanted to be at The
Briers all established and at work when he got there. I have heard lots
of times that possession is nine points of the law, and I was determined
to possess all nine.

In less time than it takes to tell it Redwheels and I were spinning away
out Providence Road. I had gone out on that road in early April in
search of Sam, when I thought nothing could equal the young loveliness
of the valley; I had driven Peter out when it was in its May flowering,
and back and forth I had gone through all its midsummering, but it had
never looked to me as it did when I came down into it from a far
country, in the ripeness of its mid-September. All the leaves were still
on the trees and many of them still rich green, but there was frost in
the air, and along the edges of the early sweet-gum and sugar-maple
branches there were crimson and bronze trimmings. Most of the gorgeous,
molten-gold grain was in stacks in the fields, and everywhere for miles
and miles were stretched the wigwams of the shocked corn, seeming to
offer homes for as many homeless as could come and ask shelter.
Goldenrod stood up stiff and glorious in all the fence corners, while
gnarled vines, fairly dragged down with wild grapes, festooned
themselves from tree to tree, some of which were already heavily loaded
with their own big, round, blackening walnuts.

Along the road there was a procession of foodstuffs going to town in
heavy old farm wagons with t