the roof, passing through and affording
freshness to the somewhat cellar-like interior. Cut off from the main
room were three smaller rooms, including the kitchen, from which Aunt
Lucy passed back and forth with massive tread. The table was no
polished mahogany, but was built of rough pine boards, and along it
stood long benches instead of chairs. For her "white folks" Aunt Lucy
spread a cloth at one end of this long table, placing also in order the
few pieces of china and silver that had survived a life of vicissitudes.

"I may be poor," said Buford, commenting grimly on the rude appearance
of the board, "and I reckon we always will be poor, but when the time
comes that I can't have a silver spoon in my coffee, then I want to
die."

"Major!" said Mrs. Buford reprovingly from the head of the table, where
she sat in state, "I do not like to hear you speak in that way. We are
in the hands of the Lord."

"Quite right," said Buford, "and I beg pardon. But, really, this
country does bring some changes, and we ourselves surely change with
it. No one seems to think of the past out here."

"Don' you b'lieve I don' never think o' the past!" broke in a deep and
uninvited voice, much to Mrs. Buford's disquietude. "This yer sho'hly
is a lan' o' Sodom an' Tomorrow. Dey ain't a sengle fiahplace in the
hull country roun' yer. When I sells mer lan' fer a hundred dollahs,
fust thing I'm a-goin' do is to build me a fiahplace an' git me er nice
big settle to putt in front o' hit, so'st I kin set mer bread to raise
befo' the fiah, like all bread orter be sot. How kin a pusson cook out
yet--not to say, _cook_?"

"That will do, Lucy," said Mrs. Buford.

"We are demoralized," said Mary Ellen hopelessly, "and I resent it. I
resent your knowing us or knowing anything about our lives. If you had
never heard anything at all about us it mightn't have been so bad. We
came out here to get away from every one."

Franklin bit his lip. "Mary Ellen, my child!" cried Mrs. Buford.

"That's hardly fair," said Franklin. "We are all beginners in this
land." Yet there was an awkward break in the conversation.

"Providence guides all our ways," said Mrs. Buford, somewhat
irrelevantly, and with her customary sigh.

"Amen!" cried a hearty voice from the kitchen. "'Scuse meh!"

"You will oblige me, captain," said Buford as they finally rose from
the table, "if you will be so good as to drive Miss Beauchamp over to
the claim shanty af