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There was a sound of slow moving above, plainly audible through the unplastered ceiling, leisurely sliding steps on the stairs, and Melissa appeared in the doorway. She was still elevated above them by two or three steps, and leaned against the casement, looking down into the smoke and disorder of the room with a listless, irresponsible gaze. A tall, unformed girl, with a braid of red hair hanging across her shoulder, and ending in a heavy, lustrous curl upon the limp folds of her blue cotton dress.

The baby had resumed a subdued but dismal proclamation of the grief from which his mother’s return had afforded him but a temporary relief, and Mrs. Sproul elevated her thin, anxious voice coaxingly.

“Lysander’s late, M’lissy, and I thought mebbe you’d milk the cow fer ‘im.”

“Why, yes, of course,” answered the girl, with a soft, good-natured drawl, descending the remaining steps slowly. “Where’s the milk-pail, mother?”

“On top o’ the chimbly,” answered the old woman tartly, pointing with the frying-pan to a bench in the corner. “If it’d ‘a’ been a snake, it’d ‘a’ bit you.”

The young girl crossed the room, and the satellites surrounding Mrs. Sproul’s chair, with an erratic change of orbit, transferred themselves to the newcomer. The older sister took a handkerchief from the pocket of her coat.

“You’d best tie this around your neck, M’lissy; it’s gettin’ chill.”

The girl accepted it carelessly, and stood in the doorway tying the bit of faded silk about her round, white throat.

“Where’s the cow, mother?”

“She’s staked on the ‘fileree, t’other side of the barn. If ye don’t find her when ye git there, come an’ ask.” The old woman drawled the last three words sarcastically.

Melissa smiled, showing a row of teeth, not small, but white and regular.

“Oh, if she’s got away, I know where she’s gone.”

“Yes, I’ll bet you do. Some folks has a heap of onnecessary learnin’.”

There was no demand upon Melissa’s supply of undervalued information. The cow was mooing reproachfully in a cropped circle of musky alfilaria behind the shed. The moon had risen, and rested for an instant upon the edge of Cucamonga, like a silver ball rolling down the mountain-side. Melissa laid her arms on the spotted heifer’s back, and gazed at the landscape dreamily. Not discontent, nor longing, nor vague, troublesome aspirations mirrored themselves in the girl’s placid face. Gentle, ease-loving natures, that might show in fair relief against a delicate background of luxury, become dull and lifeless in contrast with the coarser tints of poverty. In the parlance of those about her, Melissa was “dawdlin’,”–and those about us are likely to be just, for they speak from the righteous standpoint of results.

The moon had floated high above Cucamonga,–so high that every nook and fastness of the mountain lay revealed in her soft, nocturnal splendor; even the tops of the mottled sycamores, far below in Sawpit Canon, were touched with a vague, ghostly light; and still the council that sat in Lysander Sproul’s kitchen was loud-voiced and shrill. The children, huddled in a corner that they might whisper and giggle beyond the reach of manual reproof, had fallen asleep, a confused heap of dejected weariness. The baby’s head hung at an alarming angle from his father’s arm, and even the acrid, high-pitched notes of his grandmother’s voice failed to disturb the sleep of bedraggled innocence.

“So he’s a-wantin’ to develop the canon, is he? Time wuz when you’d ‘a’ thought that canon wuz good enough even fer him, from the lawin’ and the lyin’ and the swearin’ he done to git his clutches onto it. Well, if he wants to improve it, why don’t he improve it? Nobody’s goin’ to hender.”

“That’s what I told ‘im,” answered her son-in-law, taking the pipe from his mouth, and sending a halo of blue smoke about the head of his slumbering charge. “He said he wanted to improve the water. ‘Nobody’s goin’ to kick at that,’ says I; ‘if they do, they’re fools. I think the old lady’ll tell you to go ahead. I shouldn’t be s’prised, though,’ says I, ‘if she’d add that the water o’ Sawpit Canon’s good enough fer her without any improvin’.'”