be the first to
speak to him could not brook the delay.

"Come along, Mrs. Blagdon," she called, and with the baby still in her
arms, she sped down the cinder track to the pumping station, and then
along the line of freight cars until she recognized her father's face
looking from the caboose, which was still beyond the bridge. She shouted
joyously at him.

"Maria's out there, waitin' for us, and she's got a baby in her arms.
What do you suppose she thinks we want a baby for?"

"'Spect she's been practicin' on it, so's to take care o' us, Si," said
Shorty. "I believe we've been more trouble to your father than we wuz to
our mothers when we wuz teethin'."

"I've bin repaid for all, more'n repaid for all," said the Deacon;
"especially since I'm once more back home, and out o' the reach o' the
Sheriffs o' Tennessee. I'll stay away from Chattanoogy till after the
Grand Jury meets down there. If it does its dooty there'll be several
bills with Josiah Klegg's name entirely too conspicuous."

"I want to be able to git out to the next covenant meetin', Pap," said
Si with a grin, "and hear you confess to the brethren and sisters all
that you've bin up to down at Chattanoogy."

"Well, you won't git there," said the Deacon decisively. "We don't allow
nobody in there who hain't arrived at the years o' discreetion, which'll
keep you out for a long time yit."

The train pulled over across the bridge, and handing the baby to its
mother, Maria sprang in, to recoil in astonishment at the sight of
Annabel's blushing face.

"You mean thing," said Maria, "to steal a march on me this way, when I
wanted to be the first to see Si. Where in the world did you come from,
and how did you find out he was comin' home on this train? Si, you
didn't let her know before you did us, did you?"

She was rent by the first spasm of womanly jealousy that any other woman
should come between her brother and his mother and sisters.

"Don't be cross, Maria," pleaded Annabel. "I didn't know nothin' of it.
You know I've been down to see the Robinses, and intended to stay till
tomorrer, but something moved me to come home today, and I just happened
to take this train. I really didn't know. Yet," and the instinctive
rights of her womanhood and her future relations with Si asserted
themselves to her own wonderment, "I had what the preachers call an
inward promptin', which I felt it my dooty to obey, and I now think it
came from God. You know I ought to be