th!"

Now such sayings as this were frequent upon Job Grinnell's tongue.
He did not believe them; their utility was in their challenge to
contradiction. Thus they often promoted an increased cordiality of the
domestic relations and an accession of self-esteem.

Augusta, however, was tired; the boiling sorghum and the September sun
were debilitating in their effects. There was something in the
scene with the youthful Purdee that grated upon her half-developed
sensibilities. The baby was whimpering outright, and the cow was lowing
at the bars. She gave her irritation the luxury of withholding the salve
to Grinnell's wounded vanity. She said nothing. The tribute to Purdee
went for what it was worth, and he was forced to swallow the humble-pie
he had taken into his mouth, albeit it stuck in his throat.

A shadow seemed to have fallen into the moral atmosphere as the gentle
dusk came early on. One had a sense as if bereft, remembering that
so short a time ago at this hour the sun was still high, and that the
full-pulsed summer day throbbed to a climax of color and bloom and
redundant life. Now, the scent of harvests was on the air; in the
stubble of the sorghum patch she saw a quail's brood more than
half-grown, now afoot, and again taking to wing with a loud whirring
sound. The perfume of ripening muscadines came from the bank of the
river. The papaws hung globular among the leaves of the bushes, and the
persimmons were reddening.

The vermilion sun was low in the sky above the purpling mountains; the
stream had changed from a crystalline brown to red, to gold, and now it
was beginning to be purple and silver. And this reminded her that the
full-moon was up, and she turned to look at it--so pearly and luminous
above the jagged ridge-pole of the dark little house on the rise.
The sky about it was blue, refining into an exquisitely delicate and
ethereal neutrality near the horizon. The baby had fallen asleep, with
its bald head on the old dog's shoulder.

After the supper was over, the sorghum fire still burned beneath the
great kettle, for the syrup was not yet made, and sorghum-boiling is an
industry that cannot be intermitted. The fire in the midst of the gentle
shadow and sheen of the night had a certain profane, discordant effect.
Pete's ill-defined figure slouching over it while he skimmed the syrup
was grimly suggestive of the distillations of strange elixirs and
unhallowed liquors, and his simple face, lighted by