id Roxby, with
rallying laughter. "Mam hev sent ye skedaddlin' in no time at all. I
don't b'lieve the Lord made woman out'n the man's rib. He made her out'n
the man's backbone; fur the man ain't hed none ter speak of sence."

Millicent, with a low gurgle of laughter, sat down beside Emory at the
table, and fixed her eyes, softly lighted with mirth, upon him. The
others too had laughed, the stranger with a flattering intonation, but
young Keenan looked at her with a dumb appealing humility that did not
altogether fail of its effect, for she busied herself to help his plate
with an air of proprietorship as if he were a child, and returned
it with a smile very radiant and sufficient at close range. She then
addressed herself to her own meal. The young dogs under the table ceased
to beg, and gambolled and gnawed and tugged at her stout little shoes,
the sound of their callow mirthful growls rising occasionally above
the talk. Sometimes she rose again to wait on the table, when they came
leaping out after her, jumping and catching at her skirts, now and then
casting themselves on the ground prone before her feet, and rolling over
and over in the sheer joy of existence.

The stranger took little part in the talk at the table. Never a question
was asked him as to his mission in the mountains, or the length of
his stay, his vocation, or his home. That extreme courtesy of the
mountaineers, exemplified in their singular abstinence from any
expressions of curiosity, accepted such account of himself as he had
volunteered, and asked for no more. In the face of this standard of
manners any inquisitiveness on his part, such as might have elicited
points of interest for his merely momentary entertainment, was tabooed.
Nevertheless, silent though he was for the most part, the relish with
which he listened, his half-covert interest in the girl, his quick
observation of the others, the sudden very apparent enlivening of his
mental atmosphere, betokened that his quarters were not displeasing
to him. It seemed only a short time before the meal was ended and the
circle all, save Millicent, with pipes alight before the fire again. The
dogs, well fed, had ranged themselves on the glowing hearth, lying prone
on the hot stones; one old hound, however, who conserved the air of
listening to the conversation, sat upright and nodded from time to time,
now and again losing his balance and tipping forward in a truly human
fashion, then gazing round o