nd
pointed, with a little laugh, to a passer-by.

"There goes one kind of a cousin, I suppose."

"He's a coon," said the old man. "Him an' his mother, they live off
yonder nigh ther swamp. They used ter own this 'ere place ye're on,
an' then it passed ter ther datter, an' then her husban' bought it.
She's in ther insane asylum now, an' these rel'tives claim she ain't
crazy, but thet she was put in by ther malice of her husban'. An' they
claim he's got ther place wrongful, an' hadn't a right ter sell ter
you folks."

"That's why they're bothering us so?"

"Thet's why," said old Hayseed.

"Well, they'll find we're _two_ many for them."

Then with a sudden burst of laughter she exclaimed:

"Oh, I'm going to egg Steve on to a fight! Wouldn't it be fun! I
wonder if Steve could fight!"

"Reckon he could," said the old man with a gleam in his eye that
seemed to pierce the darkness of his glasses. "He don't look it exact
an' his manners don't promise it, but ther may be fight in him
somewhere. Ther be men, yer know, can't talk even about ther weather
without shakin' a fist in yer face. He ain't thet kind."

"No. If he were he would have murdered Sarah Maria long ago."

"He would thet, fer a fact. Then ther's others thet air so afeard--so
skeart thet a two-year-old bootblack or ther shadder of publick
derishion could put 'em ter flight. Be thet his kind?"

"I guess not!" blazed Nannie. "Steve's afraid of nothing, living or
dead."

"No, he ain't afeard. I kin see thet; but he's peaceable."

Just at this moment Nannie glanced down the sloping sides of the
ravine and saw Hilda Bretherton panting her way up toward the house.
Now, these two had not met since Hilda married and started off on her
wedding trip to France, shortly before Nannie became engaged. True to
the usual direction of her popularity, Hilda had married a small man,
beside whom she looked the good-natured giantess she indeed was, but
he was enormously rich, and in her particular set she was accounted
one of fortune's favorites.

Since casting her lot in the country Nannie had been into town but
little. For society as she had known it she cared nothing. Then, too,
marriage had entered the magic circle of the Young Woman's Club and
changed its membership, so that Nannie felt herself an alien. She was
not consciously lonely in the country, but yet there was something so
significant in the glad cry she uttered when she caught sight of
Hilda, and the unu