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Nessie let the rope slip back up through her fingers.

"I heard you were interested in the railroad," she said in a pathetic voice.

"How d'je mean?" asked Abner uncomfortably.

"I heard you were going to marry Mr. Jones's daughter—are you?"

The youth straightened, on the defensive. "Look here, Nessie!" he cried, "you sayin' that to me, an' you already married to Belshue!"

The girl stood silent with her hand resting on the bucket which swung at the edge of the well curb. It seemed to Abner that an almost invisible film of age had settled over Nessie; her features were sharpened; her blue eyes appeared larger and sadder. Her bosom had ripened and the lines of her body were a little changed from child-bearing. The dress she wore was somewhat soiled about the bosom from suckling her baby.

"I hear you really are rich," began Nessie again: she hesitated a moment, then, colouring faintly beneath the almost imperceptible roughening of her skin, "Are you still studying to be a lawyer, Abner?"

"No, I'm not doin' nothin' now—jest collectin' on my land." Here he remembered that he had come to arrange a settlement on this very house and farm.

The girl gave a deep sigh. "I wish you could have made some great somebody, Abner . . ."

"Well—I'm goin' to be rich, Nessie."

"Ye-es . . ." Her tone was dissatisfied, freighted with the unrealized dreams of her novels. Presently she began on a new tack. "You know, Abner, this is the sort of house I always meant," nodding at the decaying manor, "only, of course, kept nice."

At this moment a thin cry, repeated in an expressionless monotone, like some little animal in pain, came to Abner's ears. Nessie stooped swiftly to a basket on the ground and out of it picked up the tiniest bundle of a baby he had ever seen. He moved toward her with a catch in his breathing.