“The long ride and then this warmth — ” Seeing the anxious faces around him, he laughed again. “It’s nothing, I assure you, only the comfort and the smell of something good to eat;” he sniffed a little. “What is it?” he asked.

Old Sally was tossing and shaking the frying salt pork in the skillet at the fireplace, and the odor aggravated his already too keen appetite.

“Ye was more’n sleepy, I reckon,” shrilled the woman from the bed. “Hain’t that pone done, Sally? No, ‘tain’t liquor he needs; hit’s suthin’ to eat.”

Then the girl hastened her slow, gliding movements, drew splint chairs to a table of rough pine that stood against the side of the room,