It was the first Sunday in June. Mrs. Waycroft came along the stony hill-side road that slanted gently down from her house to Ann Boyd's. It was a dry, breezeless morning under an unclouded sun, and but for the earliness of the hour it would have been hot.

"I was just wondering," she said to Ann, whom she found in the back-yard lowering a pail of butter into the well to keep it cool—"I was just wondering if you'd heard that a new man is to preach to-day. He's a Mr. Calhoun, from Marietta, a pretty good talker, I've heard."

"No, I didn't know it," said Ann, as she let the hemp rope slowly glide through her fingers, till, with a soft sound, the pail struck the dark surface of the water forty feet below. "How am I to hear such things? Through the whole week, unless you happen along, I only have a pack of negroes about me, and they have their own meetings and shindigs to go to."

Mrs. Waycroft put her hand on the smooth, wooden windlass and peered down into the well. "This is a better place, Ann, to keep milk and butter cool than a spring-house, if you can just make folks careful about letting the bucket down. I got my well filled with milk from a busted jug once, when one of the hands, in a big hurry, pushed the bucket in and let it fall to the water."

"Nobody draws water here but me," said Ann. She had fixed her friend with a steady, penetrating stare. She was silent for a moment, then she said, abruptly: "You've got something else to say besides that about the new preacher; I have got so I read you like a book. I watched you coming along the road. I could see you over the roof of the house when you was high up in the edge of the timber, and I knew by your step you had something unusual on your mind. Besides, you know good and well that I'd never darken the door of that house again, not if forty new preachers held forth there. No, you didn't come all the way here so early for that."

The other woman smiled sheepishly under her gingham bonnet.

"I'm not going to meeting myself," she said, "and I reckon I was just talking to hear myself run on. I'm that away, you know."

"You might learn not to beat the Old Nick around a stump with a woman like me," said Ann, firmly. "You know I go straight at a thing. I've found that it pays in business and everything else."

"Well, then, I've come to tell you that I'm going over to Gilmer to-morrow to see my brother and his wife."

"Ah, you say you are!" Ann showed surprise against her will. "Gilmer?"

"Yes, you see, Ann, they've been after me for a long time, writing letters and sending word, so now that my crop is laid by I've not really got a good excuse to delay; seems like everything tends to pull me that way whether or no, for Pete McQuill is going over in the morning with an empty wagon, and, as he's coming back Thursday, why, it will just suit. I wouldn't want to stay longer than that."

The two women stood staring at each other in silence for a moment, then Ann shrugged her powerful shoulders and averted her eyes.

"That wasn't all you come to say," she said, almost tremulously.

"No, it wasn't, Ann; I admit it wasn't all—not quite all."

There was another silence. Ann fastened the end of the rope to a strong nail driven in the wood-work about the well with firm, steady fingers, then she sighed deeply.

"You see, Ann," Mrs. Waycroft gathered courage to say, "your husband and Nettie live about half a mile or three-quarters from brother's, and I didn't know but what you—I didn't know but what I might accidentally run across them."

Ann's face was hard as stone. Her eyes, resting on the far-off blue mountains and foot-hills, flashed like spiritual fires. It was at such moments that the weaker woman feared her, and Mrs. Waycroft's glance was almost apologetic. However, Ann spoke first.

"You may as well tell me, Mary Waycroft," she faltered, "exactly what you had in mind. I know you are a friend. You are a friend if there ever was one to a friendless woman. What was you thinking about? Don't be afraid to tell me. You could not hurt my feelings to save your life."

"Well, then, I will be plain, Ann," returned the widow. "I have queer thoughts about you sometimes, and last night I laid awake longer than usual and got to thinking about the vast and good blessings I have had in my children, and from that I got to thinking about you and the only baby you ever had."

"Huh! you needn't bother about that," said Ann, her lips quivering. "I reckon I don't need sympathy in that direction."

"But I did bother; I couldn't help it, Ann; for, you see, it seems to me that a misunderstanding is up between you and Nettie, anyway. She's a grown girl now, and I reckon she can hardly remember you; but I have heard, Ann, that she's never had the things a girl of her age naturally craves. She's got her beaus over there, too, so folks tell me, and wants to appear well; but Joe Boyd never was able to give her anything she needs. You see, Ann, I just sorter put myself in your place, as I laid there thinking, and it struck me that if I had as much substance as you have, and was as free to give to the needy as you are, that, even if the law had turned my child over to another to provide for, that I'd love powerful to do more for it than he was able, showing to the girl, and everybody else, that the court didn't know what it was about. And, Ann, in that way I'd feel that I was doing my duty in spite of laws or narrow public opinion."

Ann Boyd's features were working, a soft flush had come into her tanned cheeks, her hard mouth had become more flexible.

"I've thought of that ten thousand times," she said, huskily, "but I have never seen the time I could quite come down to it. Mary, it's a sort of pride that I never can overcome. I feel peculiar about Net—about the girl, anyway. It seems to me like she died away back there in her baby-clothes, with her playthings—her big rag-doll and tin kitchen—and that I almost hate the strange, grown-up person she's become away off from me. As God is my Judge, Mary Waycroft, I believe I could meet her face to face and not feel—feel like she was any near kin of mine, I can't see no reason in this way of feeling. I know she had nothing to do with what took place, but she represents Joe Boyd's part of the thing, and she's lost her place in my heart. If she could have grown up here with me it would have been different, but—" Ann went no further. She stood looking over the landscape, her hand clutching her strong chin. There was an awkward silence. Some of Ann's chickens came up to her very skirt, chirping and springing open-mouthed to her kindly hand for food. She gently and absent-mindedly waved her apron up and down and drove them away.

"I understand all that," said Mrs. Waycroft; "but I believe you feel that way just because you've got in the habit of it. I really believe you ought to let me"—the speaker caught her breath—"ought to just let me tell Nettie, when I see her, about what I know you to be at heart, away down under what the outside world thinks. And you ought to let me say that if her young heart yearns for anything her pa can't afford to buy, that I know you'd be glad, out of your bounty, to give it to her. I really believe it would open the girl's eyes and heart to you. I believe she'd not only accept your aid, but she'd be plumb happy over it, as any other girl in the same fix would be."

"Do you think that, Mary? Do you think she'd take anything—a single thing from my hands?"

"I do, Ann, as the Lord is my Creator, I do; any natural girl would be only too glad. Young women hungering for nice things to put on along with other girls ain't as particular as some hide-bound old people. Then I'll bet she didn't know what it was all about, anyway."

There was a flush in Ann's strong neck and face to the very roots of her hair. She leaned against the windlass and folded her bare arms. "Between me and you, as intimate friends, Mary Waycroft, I'd rather actually load that girl down with things to have and wear than to have anything on the face of this earth. I'd get on the train myself and go clean to Atlanta and lay myself out. What she had to wear would be the talk of the country for miles around. I'd do it to give the lie to the court that said she'd be in better hands than in mine when she went away with Joe Boyd. Oh, I'd do it fast enough, but there's no way. She wouldn't propose it, nor I wouldn't for my life. I wouldn't run the risk of being refused; that would actually humble me to the dust. No, I couldn't risk that."

"I believe, Ann, that I could do it for you in such a way that——"

"No, nobody could do it; it isn't to be done!"

"I started to say, Ann, that I believed I could kind o' hint around and find out how the land lies without using your name at all."

Ann Boyd held her breath; her face became fixed in suspense. She leaned forward, her great eyes staring eagerly at her neighbor.

"Do you think you could do that?" she asked, finally, after a lengthy pause. "Do you think you could do it without letting either of them know I was—was willing?"

"Yes, I believe I could, and you may let it rest right here. You needn't either consent or refuse, Ann, but I'll be back here about twelve o'clock Thursday, and I'll tell you what takes place."

"I'll leave the whole thing in your hands," said Ann, and she moved towards the rear door of her house. "Now"—and her tone was more joyful than it had been for years—"come in and sit down."

"No, I can't; I must hurry on back home," said the visitor. "I must get ready to go; Pete wants to make an early start."

"You know you'll have plenty of time all this evening to stuff things in that carpet-bag of yours." Ann laughed, and her friend remarked that it was the first smile and joke she had heard from Ann Boyd since their girlhood together.

"Well, I will go in, then," said Mrs. Waycroft. "I love to see you the way you are now, Ann. It does my heart good."

But the mood was gone. Ann was serious again. They sat in the sitting-room chatting till the people who had been to meeting began to return homeward along the dusty road. Among them, in Sam Hemingway's spring wagon, with its wabbling wheels and ragged oil-cloth top, were Jane and her daughter Virginia, neither of whom looked towards the cottage as they passed.

"I see Virginia's got a new hat," commented Mrs. Waycroft. "Her mother raked and scraped to get it; her credit's none too good. I hear she's in debt up to her eyes. Every stick of timber and animal down to her litter of pigs—even the farm tools—is under mortgage to money-lenders that won't stand no foolishness when pay-day comes. I saw two of 'em, myself, looking over her crop the other day and shaking their heads at the sight of the puny corn and cotton this dry spell. But she'd have the hat for Virginia if it took the roof from over her head. Her very soul's bound up in that girl. Looks like she thinks Virginia's better clay than common folks. They say she won't let her go with the Halcomb girls because their aunt had that talk about her."

"She's no better nor no worse, I reckon," said Ann, "than the general run of girls."

"There goes Langdon Chester on his prancing horse," said Mrs. Waycroft. "Oh, my! that was a bow! He took off his hat to Virginia and bent clean down to his horse's mane. If she'd been a queen he couldn't have been more gallant. For all the world, like his father used to be to high and low. I'll bet that tickled Jane. I can see her rear herself back, even from here. I wonder if she's fool enough to think, rascal as he is, that Langdon Chester would want to marry a girl like Virginia just for her good looks."

"No, he'll never marry her," Ann said, positively, and her face was hard, her eyes set in a queer stare at her neighbor. "He isn't the marrying sort. If he ever marries, he'll do it to feather his nest."

The visitor rose to go, and Ann walked with her out to the gate. Mrs. Waycroft was wondering if she would, of her own accord, bring up the subject of their recent talk, but she did not. With her hand on the gate, she said, however, in a non-committal tone:

"When did you say you'd be back?"

"Thursday, at twelve o'clock, or thereabouts," was the ready reply.

"Well, take good care of yourself," said Ann. "That will be a long, hot ride over a rough road there and back."

Going into her kitchen, Ann, with her roughly shod foot, kicked some live embers on the hearth under the pot and kettle containing her dinner, bending to examine the boiling string-beans and hunch of salt pork.

"I don't feel a bit like eating," she mused, "but I reckon my appetite will come after I calm down. Let's see now. I've got two whole days to wait before she gets back, and then the Lord above only knows what the news will be. Seems to me sorter like I'm on trial again. Nettie was too young to appear for or against me before, but now she's on the stand. Yes, she's the judge, jury, and all the rest put together. I almost wish I hadn't let Mary Waycroft see I was willing. It may make me look like a weak, begging fool, and that's something I've avoided all these years. But the game is worth the risk, humiliating as it may turn out. To be able to do something for my own flesh and blood would give me the first joy I've had in many a year. Lord, Lord, maybe she will consent, and then I'll get some good out of all the means I've been piling up. Homely as they say she is, I'd like to fairly load her down till her finery would be the talk of the county, and shiftless Joe Boyd 'ud blush to see her rustle out in public. Maybe—I say maybe—nobody really knows what a woman will do—but maybe she'll just up and declare to him that she's coming back to me, where other things will match her outfit. Come back! how odd!—come back here where she used to toddle about and play with her tricks and toys, on the floor and in the yard. That would be a glorious vindication, and then—I don't know, but maybe I'd learn to love her. I'm sure I'd feel grateful for it—even—even if it was my money and nothing else that brought her to me."