ng
countenance. "Hosses out thar, but here we go like niggers to a
camp-meetin'," she went on. "I'm not goin'."

"Oh, do go, Mrs. Starbuck," Mrs. Mayfield pleaded.

"No, I won't go a step. I won't be shamed in this way."

"Sorry, Margaret," said Jasper. "I 'lowed you'd enjoy yo'se'f, still if
you don't want to go thar's no way of compellin' you. Wall, climb up,
everybody."

Mrs. Mayfield and Lou were helped into the wagon, Jasper climbed up and
had begun to swing his long lash when Margaret cried out: "You haven't
fixed any place for me."

"For you?" Jasper replied. "Didn't know you was a goin'."

"Oh, you think you kin make me stay at home all day by myse'f, do you?
All the time studyin' how you kin go away an' leave me. Well, I'll show
you wuther I'm goin' or not."

The old man laughed. "Oh, pleased to have you come along, as the hawk
said to the chicken." She climbed up and sat down beside him and he
dodged as if she had struck at him. "Now stop yo' foolishness an' drive
on, Jasper. An' I'll jest bet anythin' that these steers run right off'n
the bluff inter the creek. I jest know it."

"Oh, not with a preacher an' all these good-lookin' women," replied
Jasper. "Whoa hawr, come here, Buck. Come here, Bright."

The old wagon creaked, groaned, shuddered and away they went down the
hill. Lou and Mrs. Mayfield "bursting into song," Jim and Tom laughing.
The dawn had been red and the early morning was still pink, with here
and there a mist-veil floating up from the creek. In the air were sudden
joys, the indescribable and indefinable glees of a lightsome day, the
very childhood of time; and back to the north the migratory bird was
singing his way, mimicked and laughed at by the native mocking songster,
jongleur of the feathered world. In all this blythe land it did not seem
that there was an ache or a pain, of the body or of the heart; the
light, the air, the music, all combined to form a wordless sermon on the
mount.

"Mr. Reverend, you are silent again," said Mrs. Mayfield, and the
preacher replied: "I didn't know that, ma'm. I thought I was singing."

"I'm not singin'," Margaret spoke up, grasping Jasper's arm. "I haven't
been so jolted since the mules ran away with me."

"Margaret," said Jasper, "you'd be jolted in the garden of Eden. Jolted
out, I gad," he roared.

"I wouldn't, no sich of a thing, an' you know it. Lou, air you shore
you put everything in the basket."

"Yes'm."

"The pickels, and t