s talk with Cassandra the evening
before, he paused at the edge of the descent, loath to leave the open
height behind him, and stretched himself under a great black cedar to
rest. As he lay there dreaming and scheming, with half-shut eyes, he
spied below him the bare red patch of soil around the cabin of Decatur
Irwin. Instantly he rose and began rapidly to descend.

Decatur was away. He had got a "job of hauling," his wife said, and had
to be away all day, but she willingly set herself to bake a fresh
corn-cake and make him coffee. He had already taken a little of his
buttermilk, but he did not care for raw salt pork alone. He wanted his
corn-bread and coffee,--the staple of the mountaineer.

She talked much, in a languid way, as she worked, and he sat in the
doorway. Now and then she asked questions about his home and
"Cassandry," which he answered evasively. She gossiped much about all
the happenings and sayings of her neighbors far and near, and complained
much, when she came to take pay from him for what she provided, of the
times which had come upon them since "Cate had hurt his foot." She told
how that fool doctor had come there and taken "hit off, makin' out like
Cate'd die of hit ef he didn't," and how "Cassandry Merlin had done
cheated her into goin' off so 't she could bide thar at the cabin alone
with that doctah man herself an' he'p him do hit."

With her snuff stick between her yellow teeth and her numerous progeny
squatting in the dirt all about the doorway, idly gazing at Frale, she
retailed her grievances without reserve. How the wife of Hoke Belew had
been "ailin'," and Cassandra had "be'n thar ev'y day keerin' fer her. I
'low she jes' goes 'cause she 'lows she'll see that doctah man thar an'
ride back with him like she done when she brung him here," said the
pallid, spiteful creature, and spat as she talked. "She nevah done that
fer me. I be'n sick a heap o' times, an' she hain't nevah come nigh me
to do a lick."

Frale was annoyed to hear Cassandra thus spoken against, for was she not
his own? He chose to defend her, while purposely concealing his bitter
anger against the doctor. "The' hain't nothin' agin Cassandry. She's
sorter kin to me, an' I 'low the' hain't."

"Naw," said the woman, changing instantly at the threatening tone, "the'
hain't nothin' agin her. I reckon he tells her whar to go, an' she jes'
goes like he tells her."

Frale threw his sack over his shoulder and started on in silen