on the railing of the porch and bent her face down
on them. With sickening fear, Chad stepped on the threshold--cap in
hand--and old Jack followed, whimpering. As his eyes grew accustomed to
the dark interior, he could see a sheeted form on a bed in the corner
and, on the pillow, a white face.

"Melissa!" he called, brokenly. A groan from the porch answered him,
and, as Chad dropped to his knees, the old woman sobbed aloud.

In low tones, as though in fear they might disturb the dead girl's
sleep, the two talked on the porch. Brokenly, the old woman told Chad
how the girl had sickened and suffered with never a word of complaint.
How, all through the war, she had fought his battles so fiercely that
no one dared attack him in her hearing. How, sick as she was, she had
gone, that night, to save his life. How she had nearly died from the
result of cold and exposure and was never the same afterward. How she
worked in the house and in the garden to keep their bodies and souls
together, after the old hunter was shot down and her boys were gone to
the war. How she had learned the story of Chad's mother from old Nathan
Cherry's daughter and how, when the old woman forbade her going to the
Bluegrass, she had slipped away and gone afoot to clear his name. And
then the old woman led Chad to where once had grown the rose-bush he
had brought Melissa from the Bluegrass, and pointed silently to a box
that seemed to have been pressed a few inches into the soft earth, and
when Chad lifted it, he saw under it the imprint of a human foot--his
own, made that morning when he held out a rose-leaf to her and she had
struck it from his hand and turned him, as an enemy, from her door.

Chad silently went inside and threw open the window to let the last
sunlight in: and he sat there, with his face as changeless as the still
face on the pillow, sat there until the sun went down and the darkness
came in and closed softly about her. She had died, the old woman said,
with his name on her lips.

. . . . .

Dolph and Rube had come back and they would take good care of the old
mother until the end of her days. But, Jack--what should be done with
Jack? The old dog could follow him no longer. He could live hardly more
than another year, and the old mother wanted him--to remind her, she
said, of Chad and of Melissa, who had loved him. He patted his faithful
old friend tenderly and, when he mounted Dixie, late the next
afternoon, Jack started to follo