Braile obeyed, saying, "Oh, I can stand cold _pone_," and at sight
of the table with the coffee and bacon renewed upon it, he mocked
tenderly, "Now just to reward you, Martha, I've got half a mind to go with
you to the next meeting in the Temple."

"I don't know as I'm goin' myself," she said, pouring the coffee.

"I wish you would, just to please me," he teased.



II


No one could say quite how it happened that the stranger went home from
the camp-meeting with old David Gillespie and his girl. Many had come
forward with hospitable offers, and the stranger had been affable with
all; but he had slipped through the hands he shook and had parried the
invitations made him. Gillespie had not seemed to invite him, and his shy
daughter had shrunk aside when the chief citizens urged their claims; yet
the stranger went with them to their outlying farm, and spent all the next
day there alone in the tall woods that shut its corn fields in.

Sally Reverdy had failed to get any light from the Gillespie girl when
she ran out from Squire Braile's cabin. The girl seemed still under the
spell that had fallen upon many at the meeting, and it appeared to Sally
that she did not want to talk; at any rate she did not talk to any
satisfactory end. A squirrel hunter believed he had caught a glimpse of
the stranger in the chestnut woods behind the Gillespie spring-house, but