collections of the night, with
the prospect visible through the open door--the serried lines of rain
dropping aslant from the gray sky and elusively outlined against the
dark masses of leafless woods that encircled the clearing; the dooryard
half submerged with puddles of a clay-brown tint, embossed always with
myriads of protruding drops of rain, for however they melted away the
downpour renewed them, and to the eye they were stationary, albeit
pervaded with a continual tremor--but somehow he was cognizant of a
certain coddling tenderness in the old woman's manner that might have
been relished by a petted child, an unaffected friendliness in the
girl's clear eyes. They made him sit close to the great wood fire; the
blue and yellow flames gushed out from the piles of hickory logs, and
the bed of coals gleamed at red and white heat beneath. They took his
hat to carefully dry it, and they spread out his cloak on two chairs
at one side of the room, where it dismally dripped. When he ventured to
sneeze, Mrs. Roxby compounded and administered a "yerb tea," a sovereign
remedy against colds, which he tasted on compulsion and in great doubt,
and swallowed with alacrity and confidence, finding its basis the easily
recognizable "toddy." He had little knowledge how white and troubled
his face had looked as he came in from the gray day, how strongly marked
were those lines of sharp mental distress, how piteously apparent was
his mute appeal for sympathy and comfort.

"Mill'cent," said the old woman in the shed-room, as they washed and
wiped the dishes after the cozy breakfast of venison and corn-dodgers
and honey and milk, "that thar man hev run agin the law, sure's ye air
born."

Millicent turned her reflective fair face, that seemed whiter and
more delicate in the damp dark day, and looked doubtfully out over the
fields, where the water ran in steely lines in the furrows.

"Mus' hev been by accident or suthin'. _He_ ain't no hardened sinner."

"Shucks!" the old woman commented upon her reluctant acquiescence. "I
ain't keerin' for the law! 'Tain't none o' my job. The tomfool men make
an' break it. Ennybody ez hev seen this war air obleeged to take note
o' the wickedness o' men in gineral. This hyer man air a sorter pitiful
sinner, an' he hev got a look in his eyes that plumb teches my heart.
I 'ain't got no call ter know nuthin' 'bout the law, bein' a 'oman an'
naterally ignorant. I dun'no' ez he hev run agin it."

"Mus' hev