days with her."

"Then go on Saturday--no, let's see--this is Tuesday. Can you go on
Friday, darling?"

"Perhaps. I can't tell--I think so--I must see."

As he drew her forward, she bent toward him, still softly, still humbly,
and an instant later, his arms were about her and his lips pressed hers.

CHAPTER XII

THE DREAM AND THE REAL

The following Friday Abel drove Blossom in his gig to the house of her
school friend in Applegate, where she was to remain for a week. On
his way home he stopped at the store for a bottle of harness oil, and
catching the red glow of the fire beyond the threshold of the public
room, he went in for a moment to ask old Adam Doolittle about a supply
of hominy meal he had ready for him at the mill. As the ancient man
crouched over the fire, with his bent hands outstretched and his
few silvery hairs rising in the warmth, his profile showed with the
exaggeration of a twelfth century grotesque, the features so distorted
by the quivering shadows that his beaked nose appeared to rest in the
crescent-shaped silhouette of his chin. His mouth was open, and
from time to time he shook his head and muttered to himself in an
undertone--a habit he had fallen into during the monotonous stretches
of Mr. Mullen's sermons. Across from him sat Jim Halloween, and in the
middle of the hearth, Solomon Hatch stood wiping the frost from his face
with a red cotton handkerchief.

"It's time you were thinkin' about goin' home, I reckon, old Adam,"
remarked Mrs. Bottom. "You've had yo' two glasses of cider an' it ain't
proper for a man of yo' years to be knockin' around arter dark. This
or'nary is goin' to be kept decent as long as I keep it."

"To be sure, to be sure," replied old Adam, nodding cheerfully at the
fire, "I ain't all I once was except in the matter or corn-shuckin'--an'
a cold-snap like this goes clean to the bones when they ain't covered."

"Did you carry any of yo' winesaps into Applegate, Abel?" inquired Jim
Halloween. "I'm savin' mine till Christmas, when the prices will take a
jump."

"No, I only drove Blossom over. She's to spend a few days in town."

"Mr. Jonathan's gone off, too, I see," observed Solomon. "He went by at
the top of his speed while I was haulin' timber this mornin'. Thar's bad
blood still betwixt you an' him, aint' thar, Abel?"

"Oh, I'm not seekin' a quarrel. The trouble is in Archie's hands an'
he'll have to keep it there."

"Well, he's a fine shape of a ma