rned to greet her.

"It's at yer sarvice, jest as the gun would be ef ye wanted it, Mrs.
Gammit--_an'_ welcome! But come in an' set down an' git cooled off a
mite. 'Tain't no place to talk, out here in the bilin' sun."

Mrs. Gammit seated herself on the end of the bench, just inside the
kitchen door, twitched off her limp, pink cotton sunbonnet, and wiped
her flushed face with the sleeve of her calico waist. Quite unsubdued
by the heat and moisture of the noonday sun, under which she had
tramped nine miles through the forest, her short, stiff, grey hair
stood up in irregular tufts above her weather-beaten forehead. Her
host, sitting sidewise on the edge of the table so that he could swing
one leg freely and spit cleanly through the open window, bit off a
contemplative quid of "blackjack" tobacco, and waited for her to
unfold the problems that troubled her.

Mrs. Gammit's rugged features were modelled to fit an expression of
vigorous, if not belligerent, self-confidence. She knew her
capabilities, well-tried in some sixty odd years of unprotected
spinsterhood. Merit alone, not matrimony, it was, that had crowned
this unsullied spinsterhood with the honorary title of "Mrs." Her
massive and energetic nose was usually carried somewhat high, in a not
unjustifiable scorn of such foolish circumstance as might seek to
thwart her will.

But to-day these strenuous features found themselves surprised by an
expression of doubt, of bewilderment, almost one might say of
humility. At her little clearing in the heart of the great wilderness
things had been happening which, to her amazement, she could not
understand. Hitherto she had found an explanation, clear at least to
herself, for everything that befell her in these silent backwoods
which other folks seemed to find so absurdly mysterious. Armed with
her self-confidence she had been able, hitherto, to deal with every
situation that had challenged her, and in a manner quite satisfactory
to herself, however the eternal verities may have smiled at it. But
now, at last, she was finding herself baffled.

Joe Barron waited with the patience of the backwoodsman and the
Indian, to whom, as to Nature herself, time seems no object, though
they always somehow manage to be on time. Mrs. Gammit continued to fan
her hot face with her sunbonnet, and to ponder her problems, while the
lines deepened between her eyes. A big black and yellow wasp buzzed
angrily against the window-pane, bewildere