the house, and they could not make themselves heard above the music and dancing and laughter and drinking of toasts. Finally one of them, who was a sort of leader because he wintered regularly in the jail, offered to go to the colonel's house in order to let him know what had occurred. And he did go—willingly too—although the night was very cold and very dark, and the mud so deep that the very bottom seemed to have dropped out of the big road. The colonel himself with his youngest daughter was leading the Virginia reel, and just going down the middle to the tune of Old Dan Tucker; so that the bearer of the evil tidings had to wait a few moments looking in on the ball before he found a chance to tell his story. It was a cruel blow to come at such a time, and the colonel felt it sorely. The prisoner reported to his companions, after his return alone to the jail, that he thought "Marse Joe was about to swear" then and there. It was in vain that the colonel's guests hastened to reassure him; to tell him that it would be a great saving to the county—so all the gentlemen said—if every one of the lazy black rascals could be induced to run away. But the colonel felt the wound to his pride. It was a matter touching his honor. And finally, finding him inflexible in his determination to do his duty under the circumstances, the men present offered—almost to a man—to go with him when he went to search for the fugitive; and they kept their word on the following day about noon when the sun was warmest, just to please the colonel, although they knew beforehand how futile the pursuit would be with vast canebrakes near by and the Cypress Swamp just beyond the hills.

That memorable night of the ball was long, long past when this March morning dawned. The colonel was very old now and very feeble, with dimmed memories and utterly alone. He had lost his wife years before. His five beautiful daughters were married and gone. Alice, the most beautiful of all, the youngest, the brightest, the highest spirited, was dead after the wrecking of her young life. The old man had aged and failed rapidly since Alice's death. He, who used to be so cheerful, sat brooding at first, turning his aching memories this way and that way, trying to see whether he might not have done something to prevent the soft-hearted child from being frightened into marrying a man whom she feared almost as much as she disliked. He was always thinking about it in those early days after her death in the bloom of youth and beauty, but he rarely spoke of it even then, and after a time he was allowed to forget. Mercifully memory faded as weakness increased. The gentle, unhappy old man became ere long again a gentle, happy child, and yet—even to the last—when aroused to glimmering consciousness the gallant manner of the courtly gentleman of the old school came back. Miss Judy thought she had never seen so polished a bearing as the colonel's had been and would be—in a way—as long as he lived. She wondered uneasily that morning, as she looked toward his house, whether the servants took good care of him; and she made up her mind to be more watchful of him herself. She was much afraid that the rain might make his rheumatism worse.

Next to the colonel's, coming down the big road, was the Gordon place, the largest and best kept in the village. The house was a low rambling structure of logs, whitewashed inside and out. The rooms had been added at random as suited the comfort and convenience of the family. It was not the habit of the Oldfield people to consider appearances. It was not the habit of the widow Gordon to consider anything but her own wishes. It may have been on account of this imperiousness, this open and scornful disregard of everything and everybody except herself and her own comfort, that she was always called "old lady Gordon" behind her back. She lived alone with a large retinue of servants in the comfortable old house, spending her days in a state of mental and physical semi-coma from over-eating and over-sleeping, using both like lethean drugs. Miss Judy alone sometimes thought that old lady Gordon so used them and pitied her. Old lady Gordon, who had a strong keen sense of humor, almost masculine in its robustness, would have laughed at the idea of Miss Judy's pity. She was the richest member of that community in which all living was simple, and in which the extremes of riches and poverty were not known as they are known to the greater world. Most of the Oldfield people dwelt contentedly in the middle estate which the wisest of men prayed for. None was poorer than Miss Judy, who had only a pittance of a pension, the old house, and the scrap of earth; none, that is, except Sidney Wendall, who, although she owned the log cabin which sheltered her family and the bit of garden lying by its side, had not a penny of income for the support of her three children, her husband's brother, and herself. Yet Miss Judy managed to provide for Miss Sophia—and herself also as an afterthought; and Sidney provided for her family without difficulty, though in both cases a steady, strenuous effort was required.

Among the few who were really well-to-do, were Tom Watson and Anne his wife. Their house, facing Miss Judy's across the big road, was rather more modern than the rest of the Oldfield houses, and it was better furnished. And yet as Miss Judy looked at its closed blinds she sighed, thinking how little money had to do with happiness, when it could give no relief from pain of mind or body. More than a year had dragged by since the master of that darkened household had been brought home after the accident which had crushed the great, strong, passionate, undisciplined, good-hearted giant into a helpless, hopeless paralytic—as the lightning fells the mighty oak in fullest leaf. The mistress of the stricken home had always been what the Oldfield people called a "still-tongued" woman, and she was now become more silent than ever. The house had never been a cheerful one, save as the noisy master blustered in and out. Now it was sad indeed: now that both husband and wife knew that he could never be any better, never otherwise than he was, although he might live for years.

Miss Judy wondered as she gazed, whether Doctor Alexander, living a little further along the big road, had yet told Anne the whole truth. After a moment she was sure that he had not. He was the kindest of bluff-spoken men. And what would be the use—since neither Anne nor the doctor nor the power of the whole world of sympathy or science could do anything more? She was glad to see the doctor's curtains still drawn. He needed all the rest he could get; he was always overworked in his practice for twenty miles around. And Mrs. Alexander, the doctor's wife, was one of the rare kind, who are always ready to sleep when other people are sleepy and to breakfast when other people are hungry: a much rarer kind, as even Miss Judy knew, unworldly as she was, than the kind who always expect others to be sleepy when they wish to sleep and to be ready to eat when they are hungry.

In the unpainted, tumble-down house next to the doctor's, somebody was awake and stirring. Miss Judy guessed it to be Kitty Mills, and she knew it was more than likely that the poor woman had not been in bed at all. It was nothing uncommon for old man Mills, Kitty's father-in-law, to keep her busy in waiting upon him the whole night through. It was utterly impossible for Kitty, or anybody else, to please him, but Kitty never seemed to mind in the least; she merely laughed and tried again—over and over with untiring kindness and unflagging patience. Miss Judy never knew quite what to make of Kitty Mills, though she had lived just across the big road from her through all these years. Miss Judy could understand submission without resistance easily enough; she had submitted to a good many hard things herself, without a murmur. But she could not comprehend the acceptance of unkindness and injustice and ingratitude and endless toil and hardship with actual hilarity, as Kitty Mills accepted all of these