"Better light," Braile said; "you wouldn't get that corn ground in time
for breakfast, now."

"I reckon," Reverdy said aloud, but to himself, rather than Braile, and
with his mind on his wife in the log cabin where he had left her in high
rebellion which she promised him nothing but a bag of cornmeal could
reduce, "she don't need to wait for me, exactly. She could grate herself
some o' the new corn, and she's got some bacon, anyway."

"Better light," Braile said again.

The sound of frying which had risen above their voices within had ceased,
and after a few quick movements of feet over the puncheon floor, with some
clicking of knives and dishes, the feet came to the door opening on the
porch and a handsome elderly woman looked out.

She was neatly dressed in a home-woven linsey-woolsey gown, with a blue
check apron reaching to its hem in front, and a white cloth passed round
her neck and crossed over her breast; she had a cap on her iron gray hair.

Braile did not visibly note her presence in saying, "The woman will want
to hear about it."

"Hear about what?" his wife asked, and then she said to Reverdy, "Good
morning, Abel. Won't you light and have breakfast with us? It's just
ready. I reckon Sally will excuse you."

"Well, she will if _you_ say so, Mrs. Braile." Reverdy made one
action of throwing his leg over the claybank's back to the ground, and
slipping the bridle over the smooth peg left from the limb of the young