herself
down. "I was joking," she said.

"We will go now," the daughter replied, "but I do wish you would stay.
I'd like to go up there among those girls. I know they are having a
good time. Help me up." She put out her hand and Lyman took hold of
it, but she pulled back, laughing. "Help me up." She put out the other
hand, her mother looking on in a fright. "You'll have to help me into
the buggy," she said.

CHAPTER XXV.

AT NANCY'S HOME.

Lyman stood gazing after them as they drove away. The girl waved her
hand at him, and then removing her glove, she waved it again. He saw
the mother turn to her as if with a word of caution. The road was
crooked, and a clump of bushes, a leafy bulge, soon hid them from
view. Lyman walked slowly and not light of heart, up the hillside to
the tree beneath which he had seen Warren and his new-found friends.
There they were, sitting on the ground, eating.

"You are just in time for a snack," old man Pitt cried, waving the leg
of a chicken.

"And here is some pie that Miss Nancy baked with her own hands," said
Warren, moving closer to the girl to make room for his friend. "I have
been telling Mr. Pitt about your funny marriage."

"Yes," Pitt spoke up, "and I was tellin' of him that if I was in your
place and wanted her, now that I had the law on my side, I'd have her
or a fight or a foot race, one or tuther, it wouldn't make much
difference which. Of course I mean if I found out after the joke was
all over that I wanted her, for I tell you--have a piece of this light
corn bread--I tell you that it is a mighty serious thing when a man
wants a woman and wants her bad. Here's some pickles--they ain't good,
but they'll do at a shake-down. But this here ham's prime. Serious
thing, sir, when a man wants a woman and wants her right bad. There's
a case in our neighborhood of a young feller goin' crazy after a woman
he wanted. It ain't but once in a while, you know, that a feller finds
the woman set up to suit him, and when he do find her, why he ought to
sorter spit on his hands--figurative like," he made haste to add,
catching the reproving eye of his daughter. "Spit on his hands
figurative like and give it out cold that he is there to stay till the
cows come home. And that reminds me that this here butter ain't of the
best. The cow eat a lot of beet tops and it didn't help her butter
none, I contend, still some folks wouldn't notice it. I hear 'em say,
Mr. Whut's-your-name, tha