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“George helped to make what you’ve got,” he said, darkly, now. “The West missed George. The West said, ‘There was a good man ruined by a woman.’ The West’d never think anything or anybody missed you, ‘cept yourself. When you went North, it never missed you; when you come back, its jaw fell. You wasn’t fit to black George’s boots.”

Black Andy’s mouth took on a bitter sort of smile, and his eyes drooped furtively as he struck the damper of the stove heavily with his foot; then he replied, slowly:

“Well, that’s all right; but if I wasn’t fit to black his boots, it ain’t my fault. I git my nature honest, as he did. We wasn’t any cross-breeds, I s’pose. We got the strain direct, and we was all right on her side.”

He jerked his head toward Aunt Kate, whose face was growing pale. She interposed now.

“Can’t you leave the dead alone?” she asked, in a voice ringing a little. “Can’t you let them rest? Ain’t it enough to quarrel about the living? Cassy’ll be here soon,” she added, peering out of the window, “and if I was you I’d try and not make her sorry she ever married a Baragar. It ain’t a feeling that’d make a sick woman live long.”

Aunt Kate did not strike often, but when she did she struck hard. Abel Baragar staggered a little under this blow, for, at the moment, it seemed to him that he saw his dead wife’s face looking at him from the chair where her sister now sat. Down in his ill-furnished heart, where there had been little which was companionable, there was a shadowed corner. Sophy Baragar had been such a true-hearted, brave-souled woman, and he had been so impatient and exacting with her, till the beautiful face, which had been reproduced in George, had lost its color and its fire, had become careworn and sweet with that sweetness which goes early out of the world. In all her days the vanished wife had never hinted at as much as Aunt Kate suggested now, and Abel Baragar shut his eyes against the thing which he was seeing. He was not all hard, after all.

Aunt Kate turned to Black Andy now.

“Mebbe Cassy ain’t for long,” she said. “Mebbe she’s come out for what she came out for before. It seems to me it’s that, or she wouldn’t have come; because she’s young yet, and she’s fond of her boy, and she’d not want to bury herself alive out here with us. Mebbe her lungs is bad again.”

“Then she’s sure to get another husband out here,” said the old man, recovering himself. “She got one before easy, on the same ticket.” With something of malice he looked over at Black Andy.

“If she can sing and dance as she done nine years ago, I shouldn’t wonder,” answered Black Andy, smoothly. These two men knew each other; they had said hard things to each other for many a year, yet they lived on together unshaken by each other’s moods and bitternesses.

“I’m getting old–I’m seventy-nine–and I ain’t for long,” urged Aunt Kate, looking Abel in the eyes. “Some day soon I’ll be stepping out and away. Then things’ll go to sixes and sevens, as they did after Sophy died. Some one ought to be here that’s got a right to be here, not a hired woman.”

Suddenly the old man raged out:

“Her–off the stage to look after this! Her, that’s kicked up her heels for a living! It’s–no, she’s no good. She’s common. She’s come, and she can go. I ain’t having sweepings from the streets living here as if they had rights.”

Aunt Kate set her lips.

“Sweepings! You’ve got to take that back, Abel. It’s not Christian. You’ve got to take that back.”

“He’ll take it back all right before we’ve done, I guess,” remarked Black Andy. “He’ll take a lot back.”

“Truth’s truth, and I’ll stand by it, and–“