T He following afternoon about dusk the mail-hack, which usually brought a few passengers over from Carlton, put Henley down at the gate. The Allens, the Wrinkles, and Mrs. Henley were seated on the porch, and all stared expectantly except the wife of the returning man, who rose suddenly and retired into the house. Henley was tanned, wore a more stylish suit of clothes than had been his wont, and a broad-brimmed hat. As he advanced up the walk, swinging his bag in one hand and a bulky parcel in the other, the observers noted that he was flushed and smiling complacently.

"Durn it all!—dad blast his pictur'!" Wrinkle ejaculated, "I'll bet he missed my letter. He wouldn't look tickled that way if he'd got it. Well, the fun is off. If I was to tell 'im now he'd know I was lyin'."

The new-comer was at the bottom of the steps now, and, depositing his things on the grass, he came up with his hand extended.

"Well, here I am," he cried, as he clasped Wrinkle's hand and shook it cordially. "I never was as glad to strike Georgia grit in my life. I feel like a old soldier back from war. As I drove over and saw the sun in its bed of yellow behind the mountains I felt like I was flying through space. This country is good enough for me, and I'll prove it by sticking to it in the future. Where's Hettie? But, first of all, I want to see that baby. Trot him out—bless his soul!—trot him out."

Profound astonishment showed itself in every face. Only old Jason seemed capable of rising to the situation. For barely an instant he floundered, and then his small eyes began to twinkle, his voice held a rippling, unctuous quality as he laid his hand on Henley's arm.

"Oh, you mean little Alf," he faltered. "Why, he's—he's in thar asleep on the bed. We-uns—the last one of us—'lowed you'd raise big objections. You always seemed to have mighty little use for anything o' the sort."

"Huh!" Henley grunted, an honest flush spreading over his face. "That's another matter altogether. There are babies and babies in this world. This one's got different blood in 'im—this one's mine! If I've made light o' having little tots, I wasn't talking about him, for he hadn't come. Where is he? Let me see 'im. I won't wake 'im. I'll walk easy, an' not say a word."

"Well, step this way." Wrinkle cast a bubbling glance of warning at Mrs. Allen, who had risen resentfully, and motioned her back into her chair, and, with a comical strut, he led Henley into the room occupied by the child's parents. Near the door, in the dim light of a sputtering tallow-dip, on a tiny bed lay the sleeping infant. Wrinkle, choking down his amusement, took the candle from the mantelpiece and held it over the little face. "You can't see the favor so plain while its eyes are shet," he chuckled, "but when it grins an' winks it's you to a gnat's heel."

"Gewhilikins, ain't he a corker!" Henley said, worshipfully, under his breath, as he leaned over the bed.

"I wouldn't wake 'im now." Mrs. Allen stood in the doorway, quite erect and cold in her bearing, and there was no one but the deluded man who failed to detect her frigid tone of offended ownership. "This is his sleepin'-time; if he wakes now he'll fret all night, an' Mr. Allen has to git his rest or he can't git up early an' do his work."

"I see," said Henley, politely. "I heard Hettie had taken some boarders. I know she'd hate to have the little thing keep anybody awake."

"Sh! not yit, for the Lord's sake, not yit!" Wrinkle whispered, as he slid along, to the bewildered mother. "Don't spile it all."

"Well, let's go back on the porch," Henley said. "I've got some'n to show you. What you reckon I've got in my bundle? Come take a look." He led them back into the outer dusk, and descended to the ground for the parcel, which, after hastily cutting the string, he opened on the steps. The others stared in astonishment at the pile of toys, little dresses, flannels, dainty caps of lace, and shoes and stockings.

"What did you go an' buy all them things for?" Wrinkle asked, rendered serious for the first time by the realization that his jest had at least cost more than he had intended.

"Because I wanted to, that's what for!" Henley laughed, proudly. "Do you reckon I was going to come away from Atlanta empty-handed when I was right where so many things could be had? I showed your letter to Mrs. Moody, who keeps the house I stopped at, and she took me down-town and helped select what was best. She said every single article would come in handy, and she ought to know—she's the mother of nine. Lord, I wish I'd got here earlier, before his bed-time. I tried to git the driver to hurry up, but first one thing happened, then another. I want to see what the little chap 'll do with this rattler; these blamed little bells set up a jinglin' noise every time the hack struck a snag."

During this monologue the machine-agent was silent, a dark frown of indecision on his face. As for his wife, she looked as if she had bartered her child's birthright for something that had disagreed with her mental digestion. Jason Wrinkle, however, reflections on the cost of his joke for the moment set aside, seemed to have fallen into his happiest mood. Unable to disguise his merriment at such close range from his victim, he had slipped out into the yard, and Allen could see him writhing in the folds of darkness as he slapped his thighs and raised his heavy boots in a soundless dance of joy.

"Well, I'll go find Hettie." Henley took up the parcel, and, with it in his arms, he clattered thunderously through the hallway back to his wife's room. There was candle-light in the room, and he saw her hastily turn toward a window as he entered and threw the things on her bed.

"Well, here I am," he announced, the ring of elation still in his voice. "I don't blame you for hiding from me, Hettie. I've acted like an old hog, and I've come back to say so."

She turned toward him, an expression of surprise struggling on her thin face, but it had never been her way to show affection, and she made no offer even to shake hands. However, he had put his arms round her and kissed her cold cheek.

"You've just come?" she said, tentatively, as she drew stiffly from his embrace.

"Just a minute ago. I had to see the baby the first thing. I couldn't wait. The old man showed him to me. Ain't he great? I hain't seen his eyes yet—he was sound asleep. I reckon that boarder-woman helps you with him; she seems to thinks lots of him, and be powerful particular. I didn't get your letter about its coming, Hettie. I'd have written at once—you know I would. It was lost, I reckon. The mails don't run right always. The old man wrote me, and it certainly was like a thunderclap. I'm mighty proud, Hettie. You see, I'd given up hoping that a baby'd ever come to us, an'—"

"To us?" The woman stared and drew herself more erect. "What do you mean? Are you crazy? You've seen babies before and never went on at such a rate. I don't care for it. I haven't once touched it since it come. I don't like its mother any too well, and she is such a fool about it that—"

"Its mother?" Henley gasped. "Why, ain't it ours—ain't it yours and mine? The—the old man wrote me that—" Henley's voice faltered and sank. His lower lip hung loose from his teeth and quivered. With a furious shrug Mrs. Henley turned from him to the curtainless window against which the outer night pressed like a palpable substance. She could hear him behind her panting like a tired beast of burden. For a moment there was an awful silence in the room, then he broke it.

"My God, he made a fool of me!" he groaned.

"And you made one of me," the woman threw back from the window, "and before them all!" She sneered, as her glance fell on the pile of gifts on the bed. "This is what you come back for? Any other man would have had too much sense to be so easily fooled." She strode to the table and picked up the candle, for what purpose he did not know, but it slipped from her fingers and fell to the floor and went out. He heard her groan, and the slats of the bed creaked as she sat down. Thankful that the darkness hid the evidences of shame on his face, and not daring to trust his voice to further utterance, he went out of the room. As he passed through the hallway he heard a low cry from the infant on the right, and its mother crooning over it. No one was on the porch. A vast weight of misery and chagrin was on him. He sat down on the steps and fumbled in his pocket for his pipe. But his nerveless fingers broke the only match he had, as he attempted to strike it on the step, and, holding his pipe before him, he sat staring into space. He had a hunted sense of wanting to avoid forever all human contact; an intangible shame burned within him, drying up the tender emotions which so recently had swayed his being.

Suddenly his glance fell on his valise still resting on the step where he had left it, and, rising, he clutched it as he might the hand of a friend. The next instant he was striding over the grass to the gate. To shun the village, the lights of which winked sardonically in the distance, he crossed the road, climbed the fence and was in the meadow which lay between his land and Dixie Hart's. Blindly he trudged through the high weeds and grass, now wet with dew.

Cruel, cruel—a joke, a mere joke, as such things went with the shallow and light-minded, and yet it was a tragedy. For several days, in the highest realm of fancy he had revelled in the first joys of fatherhood, only to have it end like this. He paused on a slight rise of the ground and looked back at the outlines of the farm-house, and cursed it and its inhuman inmates. As he dug his nails into his palms and gnashed his teeth, he swore that the surrounding mountains, so false in their late promises, should never see him more; the wide, free world should be his solace, if solace could be had.

Suddenly, as he stood, he became conscious that there was a moving blur before him, as if some portion of the general darkness, by some trick of vision, had been rendered more compact and animate. Then he saw that it was a cow, and immediately in the animal's wake appeared another blur. This was the form of a woman. In a mellow, soothing tone she called out to the cow, and Henley recognized the voice. It was Dixie Hart. Instinctively, and shrinking even from her, he started on, but she suddenly cried out:

"Don't go, Alfred, you haven't said howdy to me. You aren't going to treat an old friend that way, I know."

Putting his valise down at his feet, he stood speechless while she advanced to him, her hand extended from beneath the shawl which enveloped her head and shoulders. "How are you?" She seemed to avoid seeing his valise. "I'm powerful glad to see you back home."

He made an effort to speak, but there was a dry tightness in his throat which made him doubt his command of utterance. His only response was the dumb clasping of her hand, and to it he clung, unconscious of what the act implied, as a proof of weakness.

"I knew you had got back," she went on, her face uplifted, her friendly fingers tightening on his. "That old mischief-maker told me. I didn't come out here after the cow. That was just a dodge to keep anybody from talking about me being away from home after dark. I had to see you. I knew you needed a friend, and I'm one, Alfred—I'd sacrifice anything on earth to help you. You've been a true friend to me, and I want to be to you. I know all that happened back there."

"You say you do?"

"Yes, Mr. Wrinkle come and told me. He was laughing, but he let up, for I opened his eyes. He hasn't had such a tongue-lashing since he was born. The fool, the fool—the silly fool! You mustn't mind, Alfred. You really mustn't."

"Mind?" he muttered. "My God!"

"Oh, I know!" she went on, still soothingly. "It is awful looked at from your standpoint, but that ain't the thing. We must consider the intentions of folks before we take offence. Why, Alfred, that old busybody hasn't yet got it through his head that any living man could object to a joke like that. Nothing under high heaven was ever sacred to him; you must have noticed that in the time you have known him. He'd make a jest out of the death of his closest kin. He told me once that to think anything was wrong in this world would be to deny God's goodness to mankind. When I told him just now that he had overstepped the bounds of reason and good sense in what he done, he simply wouldn't believe it. He said you knew how to give a joke and take one, and that he liked you better than any living man. The Allens are going to leave soon. Alfred, you mustn't go 'way like this—you just mustn't."

"There's nothing else to do."

"Oh yes, there is." She laid her hand on his arm, and gazed persuasively into his eyes. "You've got your duty to perform—your duty to your wife, Alfred."

"Huh, to her!" he sniffed.

"Yes, to her," Dixie went on, simply and yet eagerly. "I'm sorry for her, Alfred. To most folks she seems peculiar, and yet God made her that way just as He made you and me like we are, and, moreover, she can't help being like she is. You told me once that you didn't think she had ever quite got over her love for her first husband, but that you counted on that when you married her. Well, all the queer things which she done while you was away, that folks thought was so funny, come from her idea of her duty in that direction. If I read her right, she thinks, somehow, that she proved herself untrue to—to the dead by marrying again, and she's let it prey on her mind. But that is over with. I think she is afraid now that she went too far."

"You think so?" Henley breathed hard.

"Yes, I lost patience with her myself during it all, and give her a piece of my mind one day. If she had been plumb sure she was right she'd have got mad, but she didn't. She took it different from what I expected. She never had paid any attention to me before, but after that day she made a point o' coming to me. She never would bring up the subject again, but she'd stand and talk with as much respect as if I'd been some old person. She looked like she was ashamed, and wanted to let me know in some other way than telling me in so many words. No, you mustn't go 'way like this, Alfred. It 'ud never do. She ain't to blame for that old man's joke, and she ought not to suffer for it. She was glad you was coming back. A woman can read a woman, and she couldn't hide it. It looked to me like she is glad to get a chance to act different and do her part. If you was to go off on top of this thing it would humiliate her awfully. A great deal would be said, and it would all heap up on her as the prime cause. You are the noblest man I ever knew, Alfred, and you won't go and do as big a wrong as this would be, and in such thoughtless haste. A man never can decide on a correct course when he is upset like you are now, and you'd live to regret it. Then think of yourself. You was plumb homesick for these old mountains, and was glad to get back."

"How did you know that?"

"A little bird told me." She quoted the saying with an arch smile. "You wanted to get here in time to be at the auction sale of that broke-down circus, and you'll miss a good thing if you go. The horses are in bad shape, owing to poor feeding and hard use, but there's big come-out in 'em. Nobody else here will have the ready money, and you'd have a clean walk-over."

"What else have they got besides hosses?" The trader's eyes twinkled with an interest that broke through the stupor that was on him.

"Oh, lots o' odds and ends; you wait and see. Tote that valise back in the house, Alfred, and don't do what you'll be sorry for all your life. If you was to leave like this to-night it would be harder than ever to come back, and you'd have to do it sooner or later. You know I'm giving you good advice."

"Yes, I know it—before God I know it," he said, fervently. "You are the best friend I've got, Dixie. No, I don't want to go back to Texas." His strong voice shook and he coughed to steady it. "I never want to roam about that way again. I forced myself to stay out there day by day. That was one mistake, and I ought not to make another on top of it. You see it right, Dixie. You see it right."

"Then there is little Joe," she reminded him. "He is still having a hard time with Sam Pitman, and the little fellow has almost counted the hours since he heard you was coming. He dotes on you. He still has the money hid away that you left for him. He says he is going to keep it till he's a man. Oh, it was so sad! Alfred, he started to run away one night awhile back, after Pitman had whipped him for planting the wrong seed-corn. I happened to meet him down the road. He had a little bundle under one arm and a pet chicken I had given him under the other. I stopped him and got him to go back. I couldn't bear the thought of having him so far away from me and unprotected. I told him that, and it made him break down and cry. Then he let me kiss him; he never had before, he's so bashful, and, well"—her eyes were glistening and her tone was husky—"the next morning I saw him in the field bright and early. He was doing the hardest work there is on a farm—digging sprouts with a heavy grubbing-hoe. But he was cheerful."

"You made him go back, just as you are making me do," Henley said, swallowing a lump in his throat and forcing a smile. "You were right in his case, and right in mine. You are my best friend. How goes it with you? We've talked enough about me."

"Same old seven and six," she answered, with a shrug. "Still fighting with the world and Carrie Wade. She's a worm in my flesh that is on a constant wiggle. She nags me more now because she is more miserable herself. She don't even get as much attention as she did. She used to go after it, but the men have headed her off. The fellows at the lumber-camp got to laughing at her for the way she done. She's got down to little boy sweethearts. She's been making eyes at Johnny Cartwright, and the little fool—he ain't more than seventeen, eight years younger'n her—is clean daft about her. Poor old Mrs. Cartwright is awfully worried. The little scamp declares he is engaged to Carrie, and, instead of giving the report the lie, she actually seems proud of it."

"But how about your marrying?" Henley questioned.

"Me? Oh, I've got my trousseau ready, every stitch of it, including hat, gloves, stockings, and what not."

"You don't tell me—well, that is news!" Henley exclaimed in surprise.

"Well, it ain't to me," Dixie laughed. "You see, Alfred, it is the same old outfit that I laid in a year ago and keep in storage. It hain't exactly the latest wrinkle as to style, but I could cut away and add a flounce here and a ruffle there, and not have so much cash to lay out as I did when I missed fire that time. But I don't think I'll get to use it soon. Field-work in the broiling sun and setting on a divan with a dinky fan to your face and a young man to peep over it don't hitch, somehow. And I'm still deep in debt to old Welborne. He's the only man I make love to, but I don't get a cent off for my smiles; he growls and grumbles every time I see him about hard times and the like. But I'll pay out one of these days. As you pass it in the morning I want you to just take a look at my stand of cotton; if the drought will let it alone I'll make five bales. Now I must go. I know you'll keep your promise, so I ain't going to worry. Good-night."

"Good-night," he echoed, and as she moved away in the darkness he took up his valise and turned his face toward the farm-house. "She's right," he muttered. "God bless her, she's plumb right."