the pity that woman
learns. And late that afternoon the little doctor, astride her rugged
horse, rode up to the cabin of Sally Taber, and made a business
proposition.

Sally was gathering wood behind her cabin with a fervour born of fear
and knowledge. She knew what the change of wind meant and her wood
pile was far from satisfactory. Long before Marcia Lowe came into
sight the old woman stood up and listened with keen, flashing eyes
alert.

"Horse!" she muttered, and then rapidly considered "whose horse?"

Not the old doctor's from The Forge, for he never used up horseflesh in
that reckless fashion. His circuit was too far and wide for such
foolish extravagance.

"It's coming this-er-way!" Sally concluded, and since there was no
other human habitation on that particular route but her own she
rightfully appropriated the approaching visitor. With a quickness of
motion one would not have suspected in such an old body, the woman ran
into her cabin and, as a society belle might have rushed for her toilet
table, Sally made for a closet in the corner of her living room. From
there she brought forth a can of vaseline and daubed some of the
contents artistically around her lips; then she tied over her shabby
gown a clean and well-preserved apron and smoothed her thin, white hair.

"Now," she muttered, composedly taking her knitting and sitting before
her hastily replenished hearth-fire; "now, I reckon who-sumever it may
be, will think I've had a po'ful feast o' po'k chops, judging from my
mouf, an' no quality ain't mo' comfortable than I be?"

A smile of content spread over the old face as this vision of
respectability enfolded the poor soul. At that moment Marcia Lowe
jumped from her horse, tied it to a tree and came rapidly up to the
open door. There was an anxious look in her eyes and the corners of
her lips drooped a trifle more than they did when she first rode up The
Way. The life of The Hollow was claiming her as it had her uncle
before her. As she looked in the cabin and saw the composed figure of
the mistress a gleam of humour lighted her face and she secretly
rebelled at the sensation of lack of ease which often overcame her in
the presence of these calm, self-possessed "poor whites."

"They are so inhumanly superior!" she thought, and then a kindlier
feeling came.

"Good afternoon, Miss Taber."

Sally looked up with an assumed surprise worthy of her race and
tradition.

"If it ain't Miss Lowe!