girl should be well educated and prepared for any change in her
circumstances--but unfortunately she has proved to be rather a wilful
young person, and it has been impossible entirely to fulfil his
intentions with regard to her. Ah, he wasn't wise always, poor Jonathan,
but I never doubted that he meant well at bottom, however things
may have appeared. His anxiety in the case of your mother was very
beautiful, and if his plans seem to have miscarried, we must lay the
blame after all, on the quality of his judgment, not of his heart."

"And the girl will be twenty-one next April, I am told?"

"Her birthday is the seventeenth, exactly ten years from the date of
Jonathan's death."

CHAPTER VIII

SHOWS TWO SIDES OF A QUARREL

At dusk that evening the miller, who had spent the day in Applegate,
stopped at Bottom's Ordinary on his way home, and received a garbled
account of the quarrel from the farmers gathered about the hospitable
hearth in the public room. The genius of personality had enabled Betsey
Bottom to hold open doors to the traveller long after the wayside tavern
in Virginia had passed from the road and the one certain fact relating
to the chance comer was that he never came. By combining a store with a
public house, she managed still to defy the progress of time as well as
the absence of guests. "Thank the Lord, I've never been one to give in
to changes!" it was her habit to exclaim.

The room was full of tobacco smoke when Abel entered, and as he paused,
in order to distinguish the row of silhouettes nodding against the ruddy
square of the fireplace, Adam Doolittle's quavering voice floated to him
from a seat in the warmest corner. The old man was now turning ninety,
and he had had, on the whole, a fortunate life, though he would have
indignantly repudiated the idea. He was a fair type of the rustic of the
past generation--slow of movement, keen of wit, racy of speech.

"What's this here tale about Mr. Jonathan knockin' Archie down an'
settin' on him, Abel?" he inquired. "Ain't you got yo' hand in yet,
seein' as you've been spilin' for a fight for the last fortnight?"

"I hadn't heard of it," replied Abel, his face flushing. "What in hell
did he knock Archie down for?"

"Jest for shooting' a few birds that might as well have been flying
about on yo' land as on his, if thar minds had been set over toward
you."

"Do you mean Mr. Jonathan got into a quarrel with him for hunting on
his land? Why,