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He broke off abruptly, as the old woman threw the dish-water dangerously near him.

“If water’s so plenty, some folks had ought to soak their heads,” she retorted, disappearing through the door.

The old man regulated the hydrant somewhat unsteadily, and returned to a seat on the porch. Lysander’s musical efforts had subsided to a not very exultant hum at the first mention of the water supply. Evidently his reflections on that subject were not conducive to religious enthusiasm. Old Withrow assumed a confidential attitude and touched his son-in-law on the knee.

“She’s always so full of her prejudisms,” he said, pointing toward the kitchen door with his thumb. “Now ‘f she’d go ‘long o’ me up to the spring and see what a tremenjus flow o’ water there is, she’d be pleased as Punch. Now wouldn’t she?”

Lysander brought his chair to the floor with a bang that made the loose boards of the porch rattle.

“Come ’round the house, pap,” he said anxiously.

The hounds followed, dejected, but hopeful, as became believers in special providence.

When the two men were out of hearing of the kitchen, Lysander took his father-in-law by the shoulders and shook him, as if by shaking down the loose contents of his brain he might make room for an idea.

“You want to shut up about the spring. It’s give out,–dried up. The blastin’ and diggin’ in the canon done it, I s’pose, an’ Poindexter–that’s the engineer–thinks Forrester’ll make it all right; but you don’t want to be coaxin’ the old woman up there, not if the court knows herself, and you want to keep your mouth purty ginerally shut. D’ y’ understand?”

The old man’s face worked in a feeble effort at comprehension.

“Give out,–dried up? Oh, come now, Lysander,” he faltered.

“Yes, dried up, and you want to do the same. Don’t you think this ‘ud be a purty good time fer you to take a trip off somer’s fer your health, pap?”

The old man stood a moment wrestling with the hopelessness of the situation. Besotted as he was, he could still realize the calamity that had overtaken them: could realize it without the slightest ability to suggest a remedy. As the direfulness of it all crept over him, something very like anger gleamed through the blear of his faded eyes.

“I’m a-goin’ to see,” he muttered sullenly, turning toward the canon. “Damn their blastin’! Forrester said it was a good trade. He’d ought to know.”

A little later, Melissa started on her much dreamed of visit to the camp. She had on her shoes now, and a comfortable sense of the propriety of her appearance induced by this fact, and an excess of starch in the skirt of her pink calico dress, brought a little flush of expectation to her cheek. She had even looked longingly at her best hat in its glory of green and purple millinery, and nothing but the absence of any excuse to offer her mother and sister for such lavish personal adornment had saved her from this final touch to the pathetic discord of her attire.

The silk handkerchief was in her pocket, properly “done up” and wrapped in a bit of newspaper, and she had rehearsed her part in the dialogue that a flattered imagination assured her must ensue upon its presentation until she felt it hardly possible that she could blunder.

“Somehow you don’t feel so bashful when you’re all dressed up,” she reflected, contemplating the angular obtrusiveness of her drapery with the satisfaction that fills the soul of the average debutante. “You feel so kind o’ sheepish when you’re barefooted and your dress is all slimpsy.”

Poor Melissa! how could she know that yesterday, in all the limp forlornness that had made her hang her head when Sterling spoke to her, she had been a part of the beauty of the canon, while to-day, in all her pink and rigid glory, she was a garish spot of discordant color in the landscape? How, indeed, do any of us know that we are not at our worst in our most triumphant moments?