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“You uns air talkin’ ’bout whut I said at the meetin’ las’ month,” Kennedy observed at length.

“An’ so be all the mounting,” Aurelia interpolated with a sudden fierce joy of reproof.

Kennedy winced visibly.

“The folks all ‘low ez ye be no better than an onbeliever.” Aurelia was bent on driving the blade home. “The idee of axin’ fur a meracle at this late day,–so ez ye kin be satisfied in yer mind ez ye hev got grace! Providence, though merciful, air obleeged, ter know ez sech air plumb scandalous an’ redic’lous.”

“Why, Aurely, hesh up,” exclaimed her husband, startled from his wonted leniency. “I hev never hearn ye talk in sech a key,–yer voice sounds plumb out o’ tune. I be plumb sorry, Jube, ez I spoke ter you uns ’bout a meracle at all. But I frar consider’ble nettled by yer words, ye see,–‘kase I know I be a powerful, lazy, shif’less cuss—-“

“Ye know a lie, then,” his helpmate interrupted promptly.

“Why, Aurely, hesh up,–ye–ye–woman, ye!” he concluded injuriously. Then resuming his remarks to Kennedy, “I know I do fool away a deal of my time with the fiddle—-“

“The sound of it is like bread ter me,–

“I couldn’t live without it,” interposed the unconquered Aurelia. “Sometimes it minds me o’ the singin’ o’ runnin’ water in a lonesome place. Then agin it minds me o’ seein’ sunshine in a dream. An’ sometimes it be sweet an’ high an’ fur off, like a voice from the sky, tellin’ what no mortial ever knowed before,–an’ then it minds me o’ the tune them angels sung ter the shepherds abidin’ in the fields. I couldn’t live without it.”

“Woman, hold yer jaw!” Basil proclaimed comprehensively. Then, renewing his explanation to Kennedy, “I kin see that I don’t purvide fur my fambly ez I ought ter do, through hatin’ work and lovin’ to play the fiddle.”

“I ain’t goin’ ter hear my home an’ hearth reviled.” Aurelia laid an imperative hand on her husband’s arm. “Ye know ye couldn ‘t make more out’n sech ground,–though I ain’t faultin’ our land, neither. We uns hev enough an’ ter spare, all we need an’ more than we deserve. We don’t need ter ax a meracle from the skies ter stay our souls on faith, nor a sign ter prove our grace.”

“Now, now, stop, Aurely!–I declar’, Jube I dunno what made me lay my tongue ter sech a word ez that thar miser’ble benighted meracle! I be powerful sorry I hurt yer feelin’s, Jube; folks seekin’ salvation git mightily mis-put sometimes, an’—-“

“I don’t want ter hear none o’ yer views on religion,” Kennedy interrupted gruffly. An apology often augments the sense of injury. In this instance it also annulled the provocation, for his own admission put Bedell hopelessly in the wrong. “Ez a friend I war argufyin’ with ye agin’ yer waste o’ time with that old fool fiddle. Ye hev got wife an’ children, an’ yit not so well off in this world’s gear ez me, a single man. I misdoubts ef ye hev hunted a day since the craps war laid by, or hev got a pound o’ jerked venison stored up fer winter. But this air yer home,”–he pointed upward at a little clearing beginning, as they approached, to be visible amidst the forest,–“an’ ef ye air satisfied with sech ez it be, that comes from laziness stiddier a contented sperit.”

With this caustic saying he suddenly left them, the procession standing silently staring after him as he took his way through the woods in the dusky red shadows of the autumnal gloaming.

Aurelia’s vaunted home was indeed a poor place,–not even the rude though substantial log-cabin common to the region. It was a flimsy shanty of boards, and except for its rickety porch was more like a box than a house. It had its perch on a jutting eminence, where it seemed the familiar of the skies, so did the clouds and winds circle about it. Through the great gateway of Sunrise Gap it commanded a landscape of a scope that might typify a world, in its multitude of mountain ranges, in the intricacies of its intervening valleys, in the glittering coils of its water-courses. Basil would sometimes sink into deep silences, overpowered by the majesty of nature in this place. After a long hiatus the bow would tremble and falter on the strings as if overawed for a time; presently the theme would strengthen, expand, resound with large meaning, and then he would send forth melodies that he had never before played or heard, his own dream, the reflection of that mighty mood of nature in the limpid pool of his receptive mind.