The dinner was late, because Uncle Zack, wishing to make an everlasting impression upon these neighbors of more moderate circumstances, had spurred the cook to the limit of her capacity. So family and guests were scattered about the porch, conversationally distrait as people are wont to be while momentarily expecting the servant's announcement.

Nancy, in whose toilette discerning eyes would have seen a generous share of Ann and Jane, was talking to the Colonel; who, in his turn, was making her position of honor guest less trying than she had pictured it during that long day of suspense.

Brent, terribly in the blues, sat at the extreme end of the porch, pretending to read the morning paper which had come in that afternoon's rural mail. Jane and Ann were near by, and Jane was noticeably quiet. Bob, having in mind his tobacco crop, called to the reader:

"What's the weather prediction for this section, old scout?"

The engineer sighed and let his eyes travel to Jane who was gazing in moody silence out at the tangle of trees and vines. Turning again to the paper, and with much rustling of the pages, he made a pretense of reading:

"The high barometric pressure and lovely sunshine generally spreading over central and southeastern Kentucky is showing no disposition to move in the direction of Arden. Forecast for the next twenty-four hours: great humility, and low, angry clouds, accompanied by moisture in the eyes and a crackling drought under the fourth left rib. Here," he handed the paper to Bob, and sent another questioning glance at Jane, "read it for yourself. I'm going in before the storm bursts!"

Bob looked after him, and then his surprised eyes sought Ann; but that young matron answered with a comprehensive smile, whereupon he sank comfortably behind the pages. Ann might have smiled again had she followed Brent to the dining-room, and there watched him change two place-cards.

Thus it chanced that Jane found herself seated next to him, and, having arranged the place-cards herself, understood exactly how it came about. The situation was decidedly awkward, and she came very near wishing their quarrel might have been postponed a few hours; especially as she realized that her other side was flanked by the Colonel, with Nancy on his right—a condition positively closing any hope of attention from this kind-hearted host. In a few minutes she was driven to seek refuge across the table in Dale; but Ann—having made a shrewd, though by no means accurate, diagnosis of the situation—determinedly held the mountaineer in leash. She then turned to Bob, but he had become engrossed with a neighbor on the subject of crops. Miss Liz was next sounded, but that lady, frivolously entangled with various occupations, proved hopeless. Finally, she tried eating, but the silence of her plate became utterly intolerable. Brent had been waiting for this.

"It's no use," he softly told her. "Suppose we make up!"

She might not have heard him.

"Don't you think it is inconsiderate to our host, and the others?" he asked. "They're sure to notice it!"

Silence.

"I didn't mean to offend you;—I was just bowled over, that's the simple truth!"

He might have been talking to an empty room.

"You've been so much like a sister to me," he ventured again, "that I didn't stop to think; and only—only acted on the very same impulse I would if you actually were my sister!" (Oh, Brent, you unconscionable liar!)

Still there was silence.

"Let's count," he suggested. "It won't be talking, and, at least, will deceive the table."

Silence.

"We might say the Lord's Prayer! That's certainly proper, and you can leave out 'as we forgive others.'"

In spite of herself the faintest shadow of a smile touched her lips, but their silence was absolute.

"Or we might try Mother Goose," again came the pleading voice. "We needn't speak after tonight—rather after this dinner. We can't, in fact, if I'm going home tomorrow! Shouldn't we make some effort to keep from spoiling the others' good time?"

Going home tomorrow? She had not heard of that! What would become of the railroad? What would become—but nothing mattered except the railroad! Was he acute enough to reason that he could move her by this threat, she wondered? And if he were, and if she yielded, would he not use it as a weapon for future forgivenesses, when he might again be taking her for his sister—something which he did not possess? This idea sealed her determination. Yet, on second thought she relented—oh, it could scarcely be called relenting—just a wee bit and, still looking steadfastly down at her plate, in a monotonous voice, said:

"Old Mother Hubbard went to the cupboard."

"Fine!" he laughed, but she quietly interrupted him:

"Nothing but Mother Goose—and, after this evening, nothing, ever!"

He drew a wry face, murmuring:

"Little Jack Sprite is very contrite, and wants to make up with his lady!"

She puzzled a moment over Little Jack Sprite. It did not seem quite relevant to the nursery classic which, only a few years back, she had read many times to Bip.

"That isn't Mother Goose," she finally stated. "I shan't do this any more."

"But it is," he protested, "and I'll show it to you in the book! They were reading Mother Goose to me long after you lost interest in it."

There was no rise to this, and he cautiously added:

"My poor brain, while ages older, has never developed up to yours. Do you know any rhymes, at all?"

Silence.

She looked again at Dale and found him listening to Ann. Again the Colonel proved unpromising. One slight remark was entirely lost on someone else, and Miss Liz offered more remote possibilities than before. After the situation recommenced its torture, rather wearily she said to her plate:

"Hey, diddle diddle, the cat and the fiddle, the cow jumped over the moon."

"I love that one," he whispered, and, taking up her meter, continued: "The little dog howled, and the pretty girl scowled, but promised to make up soon! That's the second verse."

Another silence, but not so prolonged, when her voice reached him:

"Brent, Brent, the rich man's son, broke his word and away he run!"

"Heart," he corrected. "'Broke his heart,' is the way that goes!"

The silence was desperate now, and, after he had exhausted many forms of pleading, she simply said:

"Hark, hark, the dogs do bark, the beggars are coming to town!"

"I don't think it's nice to be so personal in our Mother Goose party," he reproved her. "However, if you insist—"

"But I don't insist!"

He shrugged his shoulders. "I was just going to repeat: 'There was a little boy and a little girl lived in an alley.' Will you finish it out?"

"I don't remember it," she said, too hurriedly to be convincing. "I'll say this one: 'Birds of a feather flock together, and so will pigs and swine; rats and mice will have their choice, and so will I have mine.'"

"You have a choice collection, at any rate," he grinned.

"Some verses," she explained, "were added to the very recent editions used in my childhood."

His grin became broader. "I hoped you might come across on that before the evening was over. Has your very recent edition the one in it about: 'Jane was saucy, Jane was pert'?"

"You're a bit shocking tonight," she said, turning to the Colonel, whose attention was still on Nancy.

Brent waited a minute, then: "Maybe you don't remember this one in your very recent edition: 'A hard-hearted Queen from Flat Rock, Whose anger came as a great shock, Said: I will not speak, sir, To you for a week, sir, So he went out and—' but I haven't had time to make the last line fit. You ought to laugh now!"

"I wish I could."

"It's original!"

"So I judge."

"Is that open window too cool for you?"

Silence.

"Here's another out of your very recent edition," he began, when she desperately turned to him.

"I wish you'd play fair!"

"Have you played fair?" he asked.

"I might have expected an evasion from you!"

"Don't muddy the water, please. Let's whittle on one stick at a time. Have you played fair?"

"Of course, I have!"

"That's all I want to know."

But this reply suggested a subtle accusation which she did not like, and she asked:

"What do you mean?"

"Only this," he leaned so that his words could not be overheard, and his voice was tense with a strange seriousness. "You knew perfectly well that I was hardly to blame—and, blamable as that defense may be, what I did was done reverently. You may not know, though I'll tell you now, that you were the most exquisite thing I have ever beheld!—absolutely the most adorable and exquisite! You literally balanced yourself before my eyes, you literally taunted me with words which were a challenge of unresisting sweetness, you literally drew me, and when I came, you flew into a rage. You call that fair? I call it grossly unfair! Take it from me, Jane, that a girl who willfully fires a man, as Almighty God fires the heavens in a tempest, and then springs behind her propriety to escape, has a serious form of pyromania that'll consume her some day, just as sure as I'm talking to you—but not before it drives a lot of decent fellows to eternal flames!"

"You're talking like a madman!" she gasped.

"Far from it. I'm talking the most rational stuff you ever heard in all your life! In fact, your very presence compels me to be rational."

"An enigmatic compliment," she could not help smiling. "What kind of deliriant have you been taking tonight?"

"You!" he whispered. "Just you, who intoxicate and torture me! And as for enigmatic compliments, I swear that you inspire me with only the highest reverence at all times. Don't think the library episode indicates a lack of respect! It was the very soul of reverence speaking—though," he slowly added, "it would not have spoken in just that way if Zack's toddy—"

"I'm beginning to hate the very word of julep and toddy," she said passionately; and the Colonel, hearing this, turned with an amused expression of surprise.

Ann had let Dale off her leash, and he now was making mental charges across the table to Jane, very much as a playful puppy would physically have done to one it wished to attract. She caught his eye and smiled, and then saw the haunted look in his face which aroused her at once to what was going on.

The table had centered in a general conversation, and Miss Liz, without suspecting the sting it carried, had launched into a tirade against the lawlessness of the mountaineers who killed and were killed with an abandon worthy of Apaches. That he should now be so frantically signalling, as though he knew in her would be found help, touched the girl's responsive nature. Brent, seeing this—as he saw much that passed about him—whispered to her:

"After all's said and done, it's a good feeling—that of being needed, isn't it?"

"Our mountaineers are not law breakers, Lizzie," the Colonel was saying with more than ordinary sharpness in defense of his guest—and of his State. "They keep the law extraordinarily well."

"How can you make such a statement!" the good lady cried. "I constantly hear of men being killed up in that wicked country!"

"It's very much exaggerated, as Brent would say," he chuckled. "At any rate," he cleared his throat, "I refer to the common law."

Bob and Brent exchanged winks. They knew the old gentleman was getting frightfully tangled, and were curious to see how he would work himself out of it.

"Then I suppose you mean," her voice rang with the challenge, "that killing people is compatible with the common law?"

"Legal hangings are," he smiled blandly. "But, what I do seriously mean is this: the common law of a country, and therefore the common law of a place, is merely—and nothing more than—a common custom plus the power to change that custom. This being the case, the mountaineer of Kentucky is within the common law of his section, providing that he kills only within that section where it is a common custom—plus the power to change that custom."

Miss Liz sighed. "It doesn't sound like good sense," she said, "but may be correct. I have always thought that law is law, everywhere."

"Law is law, my dear," he gently explained to her, "until it is changed; certainly. But it is not always good sense. Take our waterways hereabouts! They are every one governed by the same old law of riparian rights which we took from England, whose waterways are no more like those in this country than threads are like ropes. And, moreover, England's law was construed long before the dream of artificial power, having to do merely with streams adapted to navigation. Who cared then for a falls or rapids? Who would have been mad enough to think of bridled electricity? So today, these falls and rapids, which are quite out of the question for navigable purposes, but possess as great a value in other respects to the people at large, are entirely demoralized through the application of an antiquated law framed to deal with streams of a totally different character. Don't you see, my dear, how fallible may be the thing called law if it runs counter to public good? And does it not show you that every common law must be—in order to be sensible—a consensus of public consent? Therefore, do I maintain that the mountaineers of our proud State, who in common consent prosecute their own feuds in their own domain, are within the common law of that domain. Some day, when Brent's and other railroads have poured into them a different civilization, their environment will be changed;—there will arise amongst them a giant to turn things upside down—as Jeremy Bentham threw defiance to the law of diodens."

The Colonel now, having distorted a little knowledge into a great flow of verbal pyrotechnics which hopelessly confused and downed Miss Liz, turned back to Nancy with a satisfied smile.

"Wasn't diodens a sort of old law that confiscated anything which destroyed life?" Brent, in an undertone, asked Jane.

It seemed a safe enough subject, and she nodded: "I think so."

"I was just wondering," he whispered, "that if this law prevailed now, which would the State confiscate—your eyes, your mouth, the tip of your chin, your—"

"If thoughts kill," she frowned, "my mind would be seized. I've murdered you several times with that."

"You've murdered me several times with everything about you! I wish I were the State!"

"State of Idiocy? Why carry coals to Newcastle?"

"To heap on your head," he laughed, "and scorch your uncharitable soul!"

"My poor lost soul," she murmured.

"Then take notice that, if finders are keepers, I'm heading a search party."

She looked gaily up at him, for it was hard to remember that she was angry; but quickly her face sobered.

"I forgot, and I must not forget, that you've mortally offended me."

There was something very serious in the way she said it—something totally beyond the slightest echo of banter—that affected him. She was looking back fearlessly into his face, and he saw the hurt in her eyes—and he saw in her eyes that she was anxious. A certain faint and subtle element of surprise and wonderment had passed across them, like a cloud shadow over a sunlit field of waving grain. It thrilled him to the very depth of his nature. For the first time in his life he was being driven by an influence, by a storm, or what you will, which contained not one element of self.

"For the love of God, what have you done?" he whispered, almost accusingly in his earnestness.

"Done?" she asked, looking away from him. "You are saying queer things tonight!"

"I am experiencing queer things tonight," his voice trembled. "May I come tomorrow and apologize properly?"

"Apologies are futile; besides, I am going to church with Bip."

"Then the next Sunday!" he entreated. "I know you've a lot to forgive—but I'm so terribly sorry! It hasn't murdered our friendship, has it, Jane?"

"I—I don't know. I'm tired tonight, and maybe can't see things as I should."

"I'm coming tomorrow, anyway, and explain," he whispered.

"No. And please promise you will never refer to this evening again!"

"Very well. And there's another promise I'll make you, too—"

But Miss Liz had arisen, and the others were pushing back their chairs, so Jane did not hear this other promise he would have made; for she was moving from the table with Doctor Stone, having pinned that gentleman as they first arose with no intention of letting him leave her. He had made one or two amateurish efforts to wait for Nancy, and now in a bewildered sort of way wondered why he continued with this other girl against his will. Doctor Stone's university course had not included psychodynamics in the female species. Thus it was that he walked from the dining-room to its carefully trimmed terrace with Jane, and thus it was that Nancy slowly followed with the Colonel, who had filled her arms with a gorgeous bouquet of peonies.

The honor guest's face was flushed, but it had been flushed throughout the dinner. Never had she sat down at so well appointed a table, and never had she openly been shown attention by one of the Colonel's social standing. She was excited and happy; she wanted to run and dance, as a flower-laden child might run and dance along a sun-kissed, wooded path!