the beauty of
her face smiling at him from under the gypsy hat, the sweetness of her
red lips, and the charm of her blue eyes. And she seeing only the look
that she had seen in every man's eyes ever since she could remember, was
not made vain thereby, as a less beautiful girl might have been. She
took it all for granted and thought no more about it. Rising on the tips
of her toes, she put back an unruly lock of David's hair with a last
loving little pat.

"There now! We are all ready," she said, with a happy sigh.

"Yes, the coffee is the first thing on the top of the basket," said Miss
Penelope, coming in from the kitchen. "That's it in the biggest bottle.
You can have it warmed over the campfire. I shouldn't like to drink
warmed-over coffee, myself. But then nobody in this house ever thinks
as I do about anything. It isn't my notion of what's right and
proper--to say nothing of Christian--to be a-dancing when everybody
ought to be a-praying. Not a day passes without something in the way of
a warning. Now there is the big hole that they've just found in the
earth right over yonder--a hollowness without end or bottom, and as dark
as the bottomless pit. That's what it ought to be called, too--instead
of the Mammoth Cave. For if that don't show that there is nothing but a
dreadful, empty shell left of this awful world, I don't know what any
true sign is. But all the same, I know very well that nobody in this
house pays any attention to what I say. Howsomever, the works of the
light-minded who are a-dancing on the edge of perdition don't make any
difference in my plain duty. And I am a-going to do it as near as I can
so long as I breathe the breath of life. When my cold, stiff hands are
crossed under the coffin-lid, nobody left 'pon top of this mournful
earth ever can say that I sat by, like a bump on a log, and never said a
word when I saw all these awful calamities a-coming."

Thus voicing these vague alarms in her sweetest tones, Miss Penelope
turned nervously and glanced at her half-sister. She was always afraid
of her, as very talkative, restless people often are of those who say
little and watch a great deal. But the widow Broadnax seemed to be
dozing among her cushions, and Miss Penelope felt it quite safe to go
on with the softly uttered threats which scattered the small dark
servitors, who were still flying about her like a flock of frightened
blackbirds, although the basket was packed.

"No," said Miss Penel