to; it was "Get out of my way!" with her mother, as with all milky,
blue-eyed women.

The old man fidgeted, lingered, stuffing "old Lynchburg" into his pipe,
(his face was dyed saffron, and smelt of tobacco,) glad to feel, when
Dode tied his fur cap, how quick and loving for him her fingers were,
and that he always had deserved they should be so. He wished the child
had some other protector to turn to than he, these war-times,--thinking
uneasily of the probable fight at Blue's Gap, though of course he knew
he never was born to be killed by a Yankee bullet. He wished she could
fancy Gaunt; but if she didn't,--that was enough.

Just then Gaunt came out of the room on to the porch, and began
loitering, in an uncertain way, up and down. A lean figure, with an
irresolute step: the baggy clothes hung on his lank limbs were
butternut-dyed, and patched besides: a Methodist itinerant in the
mountains,--you know all that means? There was nothing irresolute or
shabby in Gaunt's voice, however, as he greeted the old man,--clear,
thin, nervous. Scofield looked at him wistfully.

"Dunnot drive David off, Dody," he whispered; "I think he's summat on
his mind. What d'ye think's his last whimsey? Told me he's goin' off in
the mornin',--Lord knows where, nor for how long. Dody, d'ye
think?--he'll be wantin' till come back for company, belike? Well, he's
one o' th' Lord's own, ef he is a bit cranky."

An odd tenderness came into the man's jaded old face. Whatever trust in
God had got into his narrow heart among its bigotry, gross likings and
dislikings, had come there through the agency of this David Gaunt. He
felt as if he only had come into the secret place where his Maker and