o
come to Jordan's Journey to live like yo' uncle."

"To live like my uncle," repeated the young man, with an ironic
intonation that escaped the ears of old Adam. "But what of the miller's
little sweetheart with the short hair and the divine smile? Whose
daughter is she?"

Old Adam's thin lips flattened until a single loosened tooth midway of
his lower gum wagged impishly back and forth. His face, sunburned
and frosted like the hardened rind of some winter fruit, revealed the
prominent bones of the skull under the sunken flesh. One of his gnarled
old hands, trembling and red, clutched the clay bowl of his pipe; the
other, with the callous skin of the palm showing under the bent fingers,
rested half open on the leather patch that covered the knee of his
overalls. A picture of toilworn age, of the inevitable end of all mortal
labour, he had sat for hours in the faint sunshine, smiling with his
sunken, babyish mouth at the brood of white turkeys that crowded about
the well.

"Well, she's Reuben Merryweather's granddaughter, suh," replied Solomon
in the place of the elder. "He was overseer at Jordan's Journey, you
know, durin' the old gentleman's lifetime, after the last Jordan died
and the place was bought by yo' uncle. Ah, 'twas different, suh, when
the Jordans war livin'!"

Some furtive malice in his tone caused the stranger to turn sharply upon
him.

"The girl's mother--who was she?" he asked.

"Janet Merryweather, the prettiest gal that ever set foot on these
roads. Ah, 'twas a sad story, was hers, an' the less said about it,
the soonest forgotten. Thar was some folks, the miller among 'em, that
dropped dead out with the old minister--that was befo' Mr. Mullen's
time--for not wantin' her to be laid in the churchyard. A hard case,
doubtless, but a pious man such as I likes to feel sartain that however
much he may have fooled along with sinful women in this world, only the
most respectable of thar sex will rise around him at the Jedgment."

"And the father?" inquired the stranger, with a sound as if he drew in
his breath sharply.

"Accordin' to the Law an' the Prophets she hadn't any. That may be goin'
agin natur, suh, but 'tis stickin' close to Holy Writ an' the wisdom of
God."

To this the young man's only response was a sudden angry aversion that
showed in his face. Then lifting his horse's head from the trodden grass
by the well, he sprang into the saddle, and started, as the miller had
done, over the th