The man in the door bent his head, without taking his eyes from the
horseman, while the woman murmured something in his ear, something
that caused him to straighten up suddenly.

"Where do you come from?" he inquired, after a moment's hesitation.

"My home is in Kentucky. I live at---"

"Kentucky, eh? Well, that's a good place to come from. I guess
you're all right, stranger." He turned to speak to his companion.
A few words passed between them, and then she drew back into
the room. The woman called Eliza came up with the man's hat and a
lighted lantern. She closed the door after him as he stepped out
into the yard.

"'Round this way," he called out, making off toward the corner of
the cabin. "Don't mind the dogs. They won't bite, long as I'm here."

The wind was wailing through the stripped trees behind the
house,--a sombre, limitless wall of trees that seemed to close in
with smothering relentlessness about the lonely cabin and its raw
field of stumps. The angry, low-lying clouds and the hastening
dusk of an early April day had by this time cast the gloom of
semi-darkness over the scene. Spasmodic bursts of lightning laid
thin dull, unearthly flares upon the desolate land, and the rumble
of apple-carts filled the ear with promise of disaster. The chickens
had gone to roost; several cows, confined in a pen surrounded by the
customary stockade of poles driven deep into the earth and lashed
together with the bark of the sturdy elm, were huddled in front of