d to see me. I was proud. I wrote back home all about
it and mentioned the names of all of them. I told them about the big,
rich river-bottom farm your uncle Ted owned and begged us to visit. I
told them about the deputy sheriff that was your cousin and was such a
brave man in the White-cap raids. I told them to hurry on my church
letter, that the Methodists was begging me to join them. I told them a
lot more, but I want you to stop and think what that poor child up there
in Tennessee will have to write back home, and stop and think how she
herself is going to feel when she learns the full truth. Sam Cavanaugh,
outside of me--and I'm too old to count--I don't believe a single woman
will go to see her--not one. They are all like sheep and have to have a
leader. Even the fellows that work with John won't send their wives;
even if they did ask them, the women wouldn't go."

Cavanaugh's shaggy head sank lower over his inert hands. His lower lip
hung as if torn by pain from its fellow. A deep shadow lay in the kindly
eyes beneath the heavy brows now lowering in grim perplexity.

"I never thought of all that." He all but winced as he spoke. "That sort
o' puts the shoe on the other foot, doesn't it? Poor little Tilly! It
will be rough on her, won't it?"

The conversation rested there. Cavanaugh bore the new phase of his
dilemma out to the front porch, where he sat down by himself and
pondered deeply. Now he would utter an ejaculation as if some thought
had stabbed him to the quick; again he would fervently mutter snatches
of prayers for light, for mercy. Were his prayers answered? He wondered,
and reasonably, too, for, else, why the sudden and soothing appearance
of his wife with that calm, far-reaching ultimatum, as she seated
herself by his side and put her hand gently on his knee?

"I've thought it over, Sam," she said, as smoothly as the flowing of
deep water. "There is nothing else to be done and you are not to blame.
We will let the young folks come and we'll leave them in the hands of
God. As I see it, that is our duty."

Cavanaugh choked down his glad emotion, reached out, took her crinkled
hand in his, and pressed it. "Yes, yes, we'll do that," he agreed, "and
we'll hope for the best--we'll pray for the best. God bless them--they
shall have their little home, and I'll do all I can to help them."

CHAPTER XX

Shortly after the return of Cavanaugh and John to their work on the
court-house, John's fate was