in her work, and mimicked Robert Grant Burns with an
accuracy of manner and tone that would have astonished that pompous
person a good deal and flattered him not at all. She almost recovered
her spirits under the stimulus of Lite's presence, and she quite forgot
that he had threatened her with Hepsibah Atwood.

But when he had wiped the dishes and had taken up his hat to go, Lite
proved how tenaciously his mind could hold to an idea, and how even
Jean could not quite match him for stubbornness.

"That mattress in the little bedroom looks all right," he said. "I'll
pack it outside before I go, so it will have all day to-morrow out in
the sun. I'll have Hepsy bring her own bedding. Well--so long."

Jean would have sworn in perfect good faith that Lite led his horse out
of the stable, mounted it, and rode away to the Bar Nothing. He did
mount and ride away as far as the mouth of the coulee. But that night
he spent in the loft over the shop, and he did not sleep five minutes
during the night. Most of the time he spent leaning against his rolled
bedding, smoking and gazing at the silent house where Jean slept. You
may interpret that as you will.

Jean did not see or hear anything more of him, until about four o'clock
the next afternoon, when he drove calmly up to the house and deposited
Hepsibah Atwood upon the kitchen steps. He did not wait for Jean to
order them away. He hurried the unloading, released the wagon brake,
and drove off. So Jean, coming from the spring behind the house,
really got her first sight of him as he went rattling down to the gate.

Jean stood and looked after him, twitched her shoulders in a mental
yielding of the point for the time being, and said "How-da-do" to the
old lady.

She was not so old, as years go; fifty-five or thereabouts. And she
could have whispered into Lite's ear without standing on her toes or
asking him to bend his head. Lite was a tall man, at that. She had
gray hair that was frizzy around her brows and at the back of her neck,
and she had an Irish disposition without the brogue to go with it.

The first thing she did was to find an axe and chop a lot of
fence-posts into firewood, as easily as Lite himself could have done
it, and in other ways proceeded to make herself very much at home. The
next day she dipped the spring almost dry, and used up all the soap in
the house; and for three days went around with her skirts tucked up and
her arms bare and the sole