o return to the porch when he saw Dora, the
woman's skirt pinned up about her slight waist, coming from the cow-lot
with a tin pail half filled with milk.

"I had trouble with the cow," she said, wistfully, in her quaint,
half-querulous voice. "While I was milking, she turned around to see her
calf and mashed me against the fence. I pushed and pushed, but I
couldn't move her. Once I thought my breath was gone entirely. The calf
run along the fence, and she went after it, and that let me loose. I
lost nearly half the milk, and Aunt Jane will give me the very devil
about it. Well, Liz-- I mean your mother's gone for the night, and we
won't need quite so much. She's been drinking it for her complexion.
Some woman told her--"

"Oh, cut it out!" John cried, with a suppressed oath. "You chatter like
a feed-cutting machine."

He took the water to the porch, filled the basin, and washed his face,
hands, and neck. He was just finishing when Dora came to him with a
tattered cotton towel. "It is damp," she explained, apologetically. "I
ironed them in a hurry when they were too wet. They ought to have been
hung out in the sun longer, but the sun was low when I got through
washing, and so I brought some of them in too soon. Your ma and Aunt
Jane use the best ones in their rooms, and leave the ragged ones for
us."

"You forgot something you promised to do, brother John," she added,
timidly, as he stood vigorously wiping his face and neck.

"What was that?" he mumbled in the towel.

"Why, you promised to send a nigger to cut me some stove-wood and
kindling. I tried to cut some myself to-day, but the ax is dull and I
had trouble getting enough wood for to-night and in the morning. Will
you send him to-morrow?"

"Yes," he nodded. "I'll make one of the boys come over and cut it and
store it under the shed. There is a lot of pine scraps at the building.
I'll send a load of them over, too."

After supper, which he had with Jane Holder and her niece in the dimly
lighted dining-room, he went up to his room and prepared to work on the
estimates for Cavanaugh. He was very tired, and yet the calculations
interested him and drove away the tendency to sleep. Down-stairs he
heard Jane laughing and talking to some masculine visitor. He had a
vague impression that he knew the man, a young lawyer who was a
candidate for the Legislature. John had been approached by the man, who
had asked for his vote, but John was not of age and, moreover, h