a sufficient time had elapsed since the clicking of the latch for more
positive disclosure, I do not know; but after a few moments' hesitation
he quietly laid aside his pipe and walked slowly down the winding path
toward the gate. At the Ceanothus hedge he stopped and listened.

There was not much to hear. The hat was saying to the ribbons that it
was a fine night, and remarking generally upon the clear outline of the
Sierras against the blue-black sky. The ribbons, it so appeared, had
admired this all the way home, and asked the hat if it had ever seen
anything half so lovely as the moonlight on the summit. The hat never
had; it recalled some lovely nights in the South in Alabama ("in the
South in Ahlabahm" was the way the old man heard it), but then there
were other things that made this night seem so pleasant. The ribbons
could not possibly conceive what the hat could be thinking about. At
this point there was a pause, of which Mr. Folinsbee availed himself to
walk very grimly and craunchingly down the gravel-walk toward the
gate. Then the hat was lifted, and disappeared in the shadow, and Mr.
Folinsbee confronted only the half-foolish, half-mischievous, but wholly
pretty face of his daughter.

It was afterward known to Madrono Hollow that sharp words passed between
"Miss Jo" and the old man, and that the latter coupled the names of one
Culpepper Starbottle and his uncle, Colonel Starbottle, with certain
uncomplimentary epithets, and that Miss Jo retaliated sharply. "Her
father's blood before her father's face boiled up and proved her truly
of his race," quoted the blacksmith, who leaned toward the noble verse
of Byron. "She saw the old man's bluff and raised him," was the directer
comment of the college-bred Masters.

Meanwhile the subject of these animadversions proceeded slowly along