his hand down; her eyes blazed. Her aspect was all instinct
with anger.

"I do declar' I'll never furgive ye--ter spite him so--an' kem an' tell
_me!_ An' shame him so ez he can't hold his place--an' kem an' tell
_me!_ An' bow him down so ez he can't show his face whar he hev been so
respected by all--an' kem an' tell _me!_ An' all fur spite, fur he hev
got nuthin' ye want now. An' I gin him up an' lef him lonely, an' all
fur you-uns. Ye air mean, Abs'lom Kit-tredge, an' I'm the mos' fursaken
fool on the face o' the yearth!"

He tried to speak, but she held up her hand in expostulation.

"Nare word--fur I won't answer. I do declar' I'll never speak ter ye
agin ez long ez I live."

He flung away with a laugh and a jeer. "That's right," he said,
encouragingly; "plenty o' men would be powerful glad ef thar wives would
take pattern by that."

He caught up his hat and strode out of the room. He busied himself in
stabling his horse, and in looking after the stock. He could hear the
women's voices from the loft of the barn as they disputed about the
best methods of tending the newly hatched chickens, that had chipped
the shell so late in the fall as to be embarrassed by the frosts and the
coming cold weather. The last bee had ceased to drone about the great
crimson prince's-feather by the door-step, worn purplish through long
flaunting, and gone to seed. The clouds were creeping up and up the
slope, and others were journeying hither from over the mountains. A
sense of moisture was in the air, although a great column of dust sprang
up from the dry corn-field, with panic-stricken suggestions, and went
whirling away, carrying off withered blades in the rush. The first drops
of rain were pattering, with a resonant timbre in the midst, when Pete
came home with a newly killed deer on his horse, and the women, with
fluttering skirts and sun-bonnets, ran swiftly across from the barn to
the back door of the shed-room. Then the heavy downpour made the cabin
rock.

"Why, Eveliny an' the baby oughtn't ter be out in this hyar
rain--they'll be drenched," said the old woman, when they were all
safely housed except the two. "Whar be she?"

"A-foolin' in the gyarden spot a-getherin' seed an' sech, like she
always be," said the sister-in-law, tartly.

Absalom ran out into the rain without his hat, his heart in the clutch
of a prescient terror. No; the summer was over for the garden as well
as for him; all forlorn and rifled, its few s