the same black cotton bonnet and gown, now
faded and soiled, that she had worn at her daughter's funeral.

"Howdy' do?" she said, giving him the ends of her fingers, and resting
her carpet-bag on her hip. "I _'lowed_ you'd be glad to see me."
There was a malicious gleam in her little blue eyes, and her withered
face was hard and pale and full of desperate purpose.

"How do you do?" he replied.

She smiled as she slowly scrutinized him.

"Well, you _don't_ look as if you wus livin' on a bed of ease exactly,"
she said, in a tone of satisfaction; "you've been handled purty rough,
I reckon, fer a dandified feller like you, but--" She stopped suddenly
and glanced at Washburn, who was staring at her in surprise, then went
on: "Budd Ridly couldn't change a five-dollar bill, an' he 'lowed I
might settle my fare with the proprietor uv the shebang. Don't blame
Budd; I tol' 'im I wus well acquainted with the new stableman; an' I
am, I reckon, ef _any_body is. I had business over heer," she went on,
as she got out her old-fashioned pocket-book and fumbled it with
trembling fingers. "I couldn't attend to it by writin'; some'n's gone
wrong with the mails; it looks like I cayn't git no answers to the
letters I write."

Washburn took the money and went into the office for the change.

"I didn't see what good it would do to write, Mrs. Dawson," said
Westerfelt; "maybe it was wrong for me not to, but I've had a lot to
bear; and you--"

"_That_ you have," she interrupted, her face hardening, as she looked
across the ploughed fields, bordered by strips of yellow broom-sedge,
towards the pine forests in the west. "You wus cut bad, I heer, an'
laid up fer a week ur so, an' then the skeer them Whitecaps give you on
top of it must a' been awful to a proud sperit like yore'n; but even
sech as that will wear off _in time_. But nothin' _human_, John
Westerfelt--nothin' _human_ kin fetch back the dead. Sally's place is
unoccupied. I'm doin' her work every day, an' her dressin' an' pore
little Sunday fixin's is all still a-hangin' on the wall. She wus the
only gal--"

Washburn came back with the change. The old woman's thin hands
quivered as she took the coin and slowly counted the pieces into her
pocket-book, Washburn suspected from the expression of Westerfelt's
face that the conversation was of a private nature, so he went out to
the hack to help Budd unharness the horses.

"No," went on the old woman, sternly, "you've brou