ricks in the fireplace. At the sound of his step, she entered with an
armful of pine boughs, which she tossed to the flames.

"I reckon the cracklin' will make you feel mo' comfortable," she
observed. "Thar ain't anything like a lightwood fire to drive away the
misery."

"It does sound friendly," he responded.

For a moment she hesitated, groping apparently for some topic of
conversation which would divert his mind from one subject that engrossed
him.

"Archie's just come in," she remarked at last, "an' he walked up with
old Uncle Toby, who said he'd seen a ha'nt in the dusk over at Poplar
Spring. I don't see how Mrs. Gay an' Miss Kesiah can endure to live
thar."

"Oh, they're just darkies' tales--nobody believes in them any more than
in conjuring and witches."

"That's true, I reckon, but I shouldn't like to live over thar all
the same. They say old Mr. Jonathan comes out of his grave and walks
whenever one of 'em is to be buried or married."

"Nobody's dead that I've heard of, and I don't suppose either Mr.
Jonathan or Miss Kesiah are thinking of getting married."

"Well, I s'pose so--but I'm might glad he ain't taken the notion to walk
around here. I don't believe in ha'nts, but I ain't got no use for 'em."

She went out, closing the door after her; and dropping into a chair by
the fire, he buried his face in his hands, while he vowed in his heart
that he would stop thinking of Molly.

CHAPTER XIII

BY THE MILL-RACE

A warm, though hazy, sun followed the sharp night, and only the
blackened and damaged plants in the yard bore witness to the frost,
which had melted to the semblance of rain on the grass. On the dappled
boughs of the sycamore by the mill-race several bronze leaves hung limp
and motionless, as if they were attached by silken threads to the stems,
and the coating of moss on the revolving wheel shone like green
enamel on a groundwork of ebony. The white mist, which had wrapped the
landscape at dawn, still lay in the hollows of the pasture, from which
it floated up as the day advanced to dissolve in shining moisture upon
the hillside. There was a keen autumn tang in the air--a mingling of
rotting leaves, of crushed winesaps, of drying sassafras. As Abel passed
from the house to the mill, his gaze rested on a golden hickory tree
near the road, where a grey squirrel sported merrily under the branches.
Like most of his neighbours, he had drawn his weather predictions from
the habits of t