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of town. They can repent, I reckon. After all, nobody would get to Heaven if we couldn't repent." A melancholy tone came into Nessie's voice as she stared out of her window at a rectangular section of the shabby, unrelenting village outside.

Abner knew very well of what she was thinking. Their talk had been liable to these interruptions since the first of their sudden and passionate indiscretions. The most remote subjects brought up the condemnation under which they lived.

"I think the boys ort to of paid Stegall for his whisky before they rode him out of town," stated Abner briefly, and the subject was dropped.

Youth and girl sat silently in the hot little room filled with the same thought but moved by curiously opposed impulses. Abner was a little weary of this rather pointless sitting in the room which they had substituted for the swing on the piazza as less likely to give rise to gossip. Nessie, on the other hand, was nervously anxious for Abner to remain with her. She sat brooding unhappily for several moments and finally said, "I had such a dreadful dream last night; I have it every night."

"The same dream?"

"Nearly the same dream."

Abner felt his first tinge of interest in their afternoon tête-à-tête—dreams touched his hill superstition.

"That must mean somethin'. What kind of a dream was it?"

"Every time I go to sleep it seems like I walk through a big open door, but the minute I get through, the door disappears. I want to go back, but there is no way to get back, the door is gone. That doesn't sound awful, Abner, but oh, it feels awful. It seems to me I would give anything in this whole worl' to get back through that door, but there isn't any door; there simply isn't any. . . ." The girl was painfully moved at the mere recital of her dream.

Abner stared at her with foreboding.