"George helped to make what you've got, Andy," he said darkly now. "The
West missed George. The West said, 'There was a good man ruined by a
woman.' The West'd never think anything or anybody missed you, 'cept
yourself. When you went North, it never missed you; when you come back,
its jaw fell. You wasn't fit to black George's boots."

Black Andy's mouth took on a bitter sort of smile, and his eyes drooped
furtively, as he struck the damper of the stove heavily with his foot,
then he replied slowly:

"Well, that's all right; but if I wasn't fit to black his boots, it ain't
my fault. I git my nature honest, as he did. We wasn't any cross-
breeds, I s'pose. We got the strain direct, and we was all right on her
side." He jerked his head towards Aunt Kate, whose face was growing
pale. She interposed now.

"Can't you leave the dead alone?" she asked in a voice ringing a little.
"Can't you let them rest? Ain't it enough to quarrel about the living?
Cassy'll be here soon," she added, peering out of the window, "and if I
was you, I'd try and not make her sorry she ever married a Baragar. It
ain't a feeling that'd make a sick woman live long."

Aunt Kate did not strike often, but when she did, she struck hard. Abel
Baragar staggered a little under this blow, for, at the moment, it seemed
to him that he saw his dead wife's face looking at him from the chair
where her sister now sat. Down in his ill-furnished heart, where there
had been little which was companionable, there was a shadowed corner.
Sophy Baragar had been such a true-hearted, brave-souled woman, and he
had been so impatient and exacting with her, till the beautiful face,