's clumsy figure, her
grotesque sun-bonnet, her awkward arm-chair, were faithfully reproduced
in her shadow on the log wall of the cabin--even to the up-curling
smoke from her pipe. Once she suddenly took the stem from her mouth.
"Eveliny," she said, "'pears like ter me ye talk mighty little. Thar
ain't no use in gittin' tongue-tied up hyar on the mounting."

Evelina started and raised her eyes, dilated with a stare of amazement
at this unexpected overture.

"I ain't keerin'," said the old woman, recklessly, to herself, although
consciously recreant to the traditions of the family, and sacrificing
with a pang her distorted sense of loyalty and duty to her kindlier
impulse. "I warn't born a Kittredge nohow."

"Yes, 'm," said Evelina, meekly; "but I don't feel much like talkin'
noways; I never talked much, bein' nobody but men-folks ter our house.
I'd ruther hear ye talk 'n talk myself."

"Listen at ye now! The headin' young folks o' this kentry 'll never rest
till they make thar elders shoulder _all_ the burdens. An' what air ye
wantin' a pore ole 'oman like me ter talk about?"

Evelina hesitated a moment, then looked up, with a face radiant in the
moonbeams. "Tell all 'bout Abs'lom--afore I ever seen him."

His mother laughed. "Ye air a powerful fool, Eveliny."

The girl laughed a little, too. "I dunno ez I want ter be no wiser," she
said.

But one was his wife, and the other was his mother, and as they talked
of him daily and long, the bond between them was complete.

*****

"I hev got 'em both plumb fooled," the handsome Absalom boasted at the
settlement, when the gossips wondered once more, as they had often done,
that there should be such unity of interest between old Joel Quimbey's
daughter and old Josiah Kittredge's widow. As time went on many rumors
of great peace on the mountain-side came to the father's ears, and he
grew more testy daily as he grew visibly older. These rumors multiplied
with the discovery that they were as wormwood and gall to him. Not that
he wished his daughter to be unhappy, but the joy which was his grief
and humiliation was needlessly flaunted into his face; the idlers about
the county town had invariably a new budget of details, being
supplied, somewhat maliciously, it must be confessed, by the Kittredges
themselves. The ceremony of planting one foot on the neck of the
vanquished was in their minds one of the essential concomitants of
victory. The bold Absalom, not thoroughly