nd piggins, and asked him if
he had seen on the road a young white woman with dark eyes and hair,
apparently sick or demented. The young man answered in the negative,
and Tryon pushed forward anxiously.

At noon he stopped at a farmhouse and swallowed a hasty meal. His
inquiries here elicited no information, and he was just leaving when a
young man came in late to dinner and stated, in response to the usual
question, that he had met, some two hours before, a young woman who
answered Tryon's description, on the Lillington road, which crossed the
main road to Patesville a short distance beyond the farmhouse. He had
spoken to the woman. At first she had paid no heed to his question.
When addressed a second time, she had answered in a rambling and
disconnected way, which indicated to his mind that there was something
wrong with her.

Tryon thanked his informant and hastened to the Lillington road.
Stopping as before to inquire, he followed the woman for several hours,
each mile of the distance taking him farther away from Patesville.
From time to time he heard of the woman. Toward nightfall he found
her. She was white enough, with the sallowness of the sandhill poor
white. She was still young, perhaps, but poverty and a hard life made
her look older than she ought. She was not fair, and she was not Rena.
When Tryon came up to her, she was sitting on the doorsill of a
miserable cabin, and held in her hand a bottle, the contents of which
had never paid any revenue tax. She had walked twenty miles that day,
and had beguiled the tedium of the journey by occasional potations,
which probably accounted for the incoherency of speech which several of
those who met her had observed. When Tryon drew near, she tendered him
the bottle with tipsy cordiality. He turned in disgust and retraced
his steps to the Patesville road, which he did not reach until
nightfall. As it was too dark to prosecute the search with any chance
of success, he secured lodging for the night, intending to resume his
quest early in the morning.

XXXIII

A MULE AND A CART

Frank Fowler's heart was filled with longing for a sight of Rena's
face. When she had gone away first, on the ill-fated trip to South
Carolina, her absence had left an aching void in his life; he had
missed her cheerful smile, her pleasant words, her graceful figure
moving about across the narrow street. His work had grown monotonous
during her absence; the clatter of ham