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 at her sides. Lassitude physical and spiritual spoke in her blank face and slumping body.

"It makes me feel bad, Judy, to see you go like all the rest of us, you that growed up so strong an' handsome, so full o' life an' spirits. I've watched you sence you was a baby growin' like a pink rosebud, an' then blossomin', so beautiful to see. And now—"

Huskily his voice went silent. He made squares and triangles on the ground with his heel.

"Sometimes I've thought that mebbe if you an' me'd been of an age, an' not me near old enough to be your grandaddy, you an' me together, Judy, might a made sumpin out of our lives, anyway got in a little play along with the grind. Mebbe so, mebbe not. Whichever way it don't do no good to figger about it—ner no harm neither."

He smiled again his fine, dry smile.

After he was gone and she had watched his broad, bowed back disappear down the side of the ridge, she sat looking out across the wide expanse of country to the horizon. The glow of the sunset had faded and there was nothing left but a few broken horizontal bars of pale saffron, backed by gray and lavender. Between her eyes and the saffron bars the long stretch of hills and valleys was sinking swiftly into darkness. They looked at her palely across the gloom-filled distance with a sad, horizontal gaze, sad and level, like her own.

At last she got up abruptly from the doorstep and went into the house and to the bottom shelf in the cupboard where Jerry kept his rarely used demijohn of whiskey. She took out the corncob stopper, poured a few spoonfuls into a teacup and tasted it gingerly. It burned her lips and throat and some of it went down the wrong way. She made a wry face, coughed, gagged, rushed to the water bucket and drank a dipperful of water, then slackly set about gathering up the supper dishes.

She made no further attempt to find the cheer that lay in the demijohn; but as the weeks went by something of Jabez' poise and calm seemed to have settled on her spirit. Often, thinking of their talk and seeing in memory his fine, sad smile,