ied his mother. "The Lord knows thar
ain't any of his kind left, the mo' 's the pity! Things have changed
sence Reuben an' I was young, an' the very language Abel an' Blossom
speak is different from ours. I reckon if old Mr. Jonathan was to ride
along these roads to-day thar wouldn't be anybody, unless it was a
nigger, to open the gate for him."

"You bet there wouldn't!" exclaimed Abel with fervour.

Abner, walking at Sarah's side, wore the unnerved and anxious expression
of a man who is conscious that he is wearing his Sunday suit when it has
grown too small to contain him. His agony was so evident that Blossom,
observing it in the midst of her sentimental disturbances, remarked
affectionately that he looked as if he "were tired to death."

"I've got the church fidgets in my legs," he said. "I reckon I'll get
into my everyday suit an' finish that piece of ploughin'. Are you goin'
back to the mill, Abel?"

"No, I've shut down for the day," Abel replied. The funeral had turned
his mind into its Sunday habit of thought and he was determined that his
present state of misery should extend reverently until the evening. From
some instinct, which he did not attempt to explain, it appeared more
respectful to Reuben to sit idle for the rest of the day than to follow
Abner's example and go out and finish his work.

The next morning he decided to write Molly a letter, and as the ordinary
paper his mother kept at the house seemed unsuitable for delivery at
Jordan's Journey, he walked down to the store to purchase a few sheets
from Mrs. Bottoms.

"Nothing common and cheap," he said, "but the very best you have in the
store--such as they use in the city."

Suspecting his purpose, she produced at once a turquoise coloured box,
from which she extracted an envelope that was ornamented on the flap
with a white dove holding a true lover's knot in his beak.

"This is the very thing you're lookin' for," she observed, in the tone
of one who is conscious of being an authority in that sphere to which
God has called her, "the latest style in Applegate."

Picking up the envelope he held it doubtfully toward the light in the
doorway.

"Are you sure it isn't a little--a little loud?" he inquired wistfully.

"Loud? Dear me, to think of you callin' a dove an' a blue ribbon bow
loud! Ain't that jest like a man? They can't be expected to have taste
in sech matters. No, it ain't loud!" she replied with more direct
condescension. "It's the