coming home from school. She
hastily tied a girlish sun-bonnet under her chin, and slipping out of
the back door, swept like a lissom shadow along the line of fence
until she seemed to melt into the umbrage of the woods that fringed the
distant north boundary.

CHAPTER IX.

Meanwhile, unaware of her husband's sudden relapse to her old border
principles and of the visit that had induced it, Mrs. McKinstry was
slowly returning from a lugubrious recital of her moods and feelings
at the parson's. As she crossed the barren flat and reached the wooded
upland midway between the school-house and the ranch, she saw before
her the old familiar figure of Seth Davis lounging on the trail. In her
habitual loyalty to her husband's feuds she would probably have stalked
defiantly past him, notwithstanding her late regrets of the broken
engagement, but Seth began to advance awkwardly towards her. In fact, he
had noticed the tall, gaunt, plaid-shawled and holland-bonneted figure
approaching, and had waited for it.

As he seemed intent upon getting in her way she stopped and raised
her right hand warningly before her. In spite of the shawl and the
sun-bonnet, suffering had implanted a rude Runic dignity to her
attitude. "Words that hev to be took back, Seth Davis," she said
hastily, "hev passed between you and my man. Out of my way, then, that I
may pass, too."

"Not much betwixt you and me, Aunt Rachel," he said with slouching
deprecation, using the old household title by which he had familiarly
known her. "I've nothin agin you--and I kin prove it by wot I'm yer
to say. And I ain't trucklin' to yer for myself, for ez far ez me and
your'n ez concerned," he continued, with a malevolent glance, "thar
ain't gold enough in Caleforny to mak the weddin' ring that could hitch
me and Cress together. I want to tell you that you're bein' played; that
you're bein' befooled and bamboozled and honey-fogled. Thet while
you're groanin' at class-meetin' and Hiram's quo'llin' with Dad, and
Joe Masters waitin' round to pick up any bone that's throwed him, that
sneakin', hypocritical Yankee school-master is draggin' your daughter to
h-ll with him on the sly."

"Quit that, Seth Davis," said Mrs. McKinstry sternly, "or be man enough
to tell it to a man. That's Hiram's business to know."

"And what if he knows it well enough and winks at it? What if he's
willin' enough to truckle to it, to curry favor with them sneakin'
Yanks?" said Seth malign