ng when they met; but this perfunctory
salutation was usually hurtled across the historic borderline and was
seldom concluded without some reference to it. For Ellen Webster was an
aggravating old woman dowered with just enough of the harpy never to be
able to leave her antagonist in peace if she saw him at work in his
garden.

"Mornin', Martin," she would call.

"Good mornin', Miss Webster."

"So you're plowin' up a new strip of land."

"Yes, marm."

"I s'pose you know it would save you a deal of cartin' if you was to use
the stones you're gettin' out to fix up your wall."

Then the hector would watch the brick-red color steal slowly from the
man's cheek up to his forehead.

To pile the stones on the heap so near at hand would, he recognized, have
saved both time and trouble; nevertheless, he would have worked until he
dropped in his tracks rather than have yielded to the temptation.

_His_ wall, indeed! The impudence of the vixen!

Angry in every fiber of his body, he would therefore wheel upon his
tormentor and flash out:

"When you see me tinkerin' your tumbledown wall, Miss Ellen Webster, I'll
be some older than I am now. I've work enough of my own to do without
takin' in repairs for my neighbors."

At that he would hear a malicious chuckle.

For some such response Ellen always waited. She liked to see the fire of
rage burn itself through Martin's tan and feel that she had the power to
kindle it. He never disappointed her. Sometimes, to be sure, she had to
prod him more than once, but eventually his retort, sharp as the sting of
an insect, was certain to come. From it she derived a half-humorous,
half-vindictive satisfaction, for she was a keen student of human nature,
and no one knew better than she that after the cutting words had left his
lips proud-spirited young Martin scorned himself for having been goaded
into uttering them.

A tantalizing creature, Ellen Webster!

Silent, penurious, shrewd to the margin of dishonesty; unrelenting as the
rock-fronted fastnesses of her native hills; good-humored at times and
even possessed of swift moods of tenderness that disarmed and
appealed--such she was. She stood straight as a spruce despite the burden
of her years, and a suggestion of girlhood's bloom still colored her
cheek; but the features of her crafty countenance were tightly drawn; the
blue eyes glinted with metallic light; and the mouth was saved from
cruelty only by its upward curve of humor.