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“Who was them people?” he demanded.

“Some tourists.”

“What’d they stop here for?”

“One of the women wanted to pick some blue weed by the side of the road.”

“H’m! I wish to God she’d pick some of the blue weed out the grain field,” he said. “Why did they turn around and go back?”

“They wanted to get to Lockwood before dark, I guess.”

Later in the evening, Mauney sat on the kitchen verandah lost in thought. He leaned back in his tilted chair and rested his head on the window-sill. Presently he fell asleep. He was awakened by a sharp sensation on his chin.

“What’s the matter?” he asked, opening his eyes to see the hired girl standing near him, smiling broadly.

“I just pulled one of them hairs out o’ your chin, Maun,” she laughed. “When are yuh goin’ to start to shave ’em?”

ssss1

“A rustic roughness”—Horace, Ep. Book I.

The story he had heard from his aunt, with its unexplained gaps, filled Mauney’s mind for days. He wondered most about what she had not told him. Her seemingly instinctive fear—or was it scorn?—of meeting his father roused torturing curiosity. Probably his mother’s letters had told her either plainly or in suggestive language of her great unhappiness.