over the narrow space that still held it from safety. Up the final ascent the oxen toiled, in a blackness that was worse than the blackness of night. Then, as if a sheet of flame had run from the low-lying clouds to the earth, the weird, white fire of the lightning revealed the blackness of the last farthest point of the heavens, and even before it faded, air and earth shook with the terrible reverberations of the thunder. The oxen sprang, terrorstricken, into the shelter of the barn. Barnaby and the

man seized the great doors and pulled them shut. As they turned the bar that fastened them, the fury of the rain, frantic to be thwarted, dashed in floods against the barriers.

Through the dusk of the great barn sounded the beating of the torrents of rain, the twittering of swallows from the cavernous darkness above, and the soft sighs of the passive oxen. The two men knew that the moment for speech had come, and a strange awkwardness, in sharp contrast to the ease with which they had worked together, seized them. Barnaby, reeking with perspiration, felt a chill strange to the heat of the day, and was putting on his coat and waistcoat.

"I could n't have saved it without you," said the big fellow shyly. "It fixes my taxes all right. I don't know how to thank you."

"Let the tax-gatherer do that," retorted Barnaby, "he seems to be the gainer."

"Oh, he 'd get his part all right," the other answered him. "Last year I had to sell my calves, instead of raising 'em."

"Do you sell hay?”

"Not till I've turned it into yearlings. Wait a jiffy, till I unyoke and fodder the beasts, an' we 'll go to the house and hunt some grub."

As he worked, the man talked on with odd intonation, as he unshipped a bow or threw down some hay:

"You 're Parson Craig's company, I 'spose: the one that 's going to preach next Sabbath."

"I'm over here to see Mr. Craig, but I'm not going to preach next Sabbath or any other time," laughed Barnaby.

"Well, I thought 't was queer if a parson could take hold o' things the way you did. Mostly they work so hard Sabbaths, they have to rest just as hard the rest of the week. By the way, my name 's Joseph Ashgrave."

"And mine Francis Barnaby. I told Blanket, the stage driver, my history this morning, so I guess there's no need of repeating it."

"You're on to him, I see. He's cheaper than the county paper and more entertaining. There, that's done. Now we 'll make the house, if you 've no objection to going by the cellar. It's a little darker, but a heap sight dryer. By the way, I live all alone; so you'll have to take bachelor's luck."

They dropped into the cellar of the barn, and at the extreme end found a low wooden door which opened into a narrow passage leading under the wood-shed to the cellar of the house. From there the stairs led directly to the kitchen. There, before a fire newly kindled in the great fireplace, sat a girl drying her wet skirts. She turned her head to the noise of their entrance, and Barnaby recognised the girl he had met the day before on the highway. Ashgrave sprang forward, with a lilt of pleasure in his voice as he exclaimed: "Why, 'Mandy! Where under the sun "Under the rain, you mean;" then, as she recognised Barnaby, she checked herself and a flush of embarrassment stole up her throat and over her face.

"

"I was on the upper hill, berrying," she went on, in an effort to appear natural, "and the rain caught me."

"You mean, did n't catch you," Ashgrave caught her up in retaliation. "If it had, you'd a been drowned. Oh, Mr. Barnaby, 'Mandy."

She came forward for the inevitable hand-shaking with an ease Barnaby had not anticipated. He had a sense of pleasure in her slim figure, clad in a print dress, that in its very simplicity escaped obtrusiveness; and again the face, which had so impressed him with sadness at first, was lighted by a smile so rare that he could think of no other fitting word, save the one he had used to Craig, "glorious." Yet - and this notwithstanding he despised himself for it - he noted that the hand she laid in his was rough and reddened with work.

He greeted her as "Miss Seagrave," and Ashgrave, who seemingly had purposely omitted mention of her name, started, while a queer look of suspicion drew his eyes together under his scowling brows, in a manner far from pleasant.

"Unless you're going to turn me out," the girl said, turning to Ashgrave, “I 'll make myself useful and get you some dinner.”

"If you don't go till I turn you out, we 'll have to send for the parson to save scandal," he retorted. Barnaby, who had begun to know himself drawn toward the fellow, felt his blood tingle at the coarseness of the jest, in sympathy with the flush that overspread the girl's face.

The girl walked to the window and looked out on the rain still falling in wind-driven torrents, and then began to spread the table and set out the simple meal. Barnaby questioned with himself whether it was ignorance or ugliness on Ashgrave's part, and was equally inclined to either solution. He was perplexed as well at the

familiarity which the girl showed with the house, as manifested by the quickness of her coming and going. Ashgrave aided, evidently more to keep near the girl than because he cared to assist, but Barnaby was impressed that she sought to avoid contact with him, and also that as her effort became apparent, Ashgrave's surliness was more marked. Indeed, by the time the meal was ready, it had grown to such a degree that he would gladly have foregone eating and taken his way homeward, but for the rain- and the girl.

He had come to the determination not to leave her there, forgetful that she had taken shelter without the least expectation possible, save that she would be alone with Ashgrave. He was certain that Ashgrave wished him away; but he failed to comprehend the possibility that the girl's embarrassment - no less than Ashgrave's surliness was due to his presence, rather than any real resentment of Ashgrave's actions.

Ashgrave hesitated a moment after they had seated themselves, and then asked the conventional blessing, without which a New England meal was rarely begun. The girl seemed to expect it, and took it as a matter of

course.

Ashgrave had brought up from the cellar a pitcher from which he poured into a cheap glass a dark amber-rich liquor on top of which bubbles foamed and burst.

"Have some sweet cider?" he asked.

"Sweet cider, at this time of year!" Barnaby exclaimed.

"Since the Neal Dow law, cider don't grow hard in Maine any more. It's against the law. We'd jug it, if it did."

"And drink it as long as it does n't," the girl added. "The law 's better than mustard seed."

If there was no attempt on their part to make talk, it struck Barnaby it was not because they were too sullen, but rather because they did n't know how. For himself, he felt that with either he would have found silence unnecessary; and he knew that but for him they would have made the meal vocal with tumultuous chatter, no less satisfying because inconsequential.

One thing was certain, the tremendous spirit of energy with which Ashgrave had worked at saving the hay was gone, and this not through any appearance of fatigue, but rather because of a mental indolence that made some physical incentive necessary to the excitation of the will. Under other environments, with his tremendous physical powers, he would have been the dreaming sensualist, whom cumulative passion swept at intervals into unrestrainable fury. Barnaby did not analyse this condition, he simply felt it; and it stirred him with a sense of the unsafety of the girl in thrusting herself, as it seemed to him, into relations with such a nature. For, from the start, he did not think of her as in love with Ashgrave, but rather as attracted by him; or, what seemed a more hazardous imagining, as disposed to experiment with him. He instinctively applied to the actual situation the measure of a society more complex, even though, in reality, markedly simple.

The air grew comparatively cool with the passing of the tempest, and Barnaby, learning that his road to the village led past the Seagrave farm, proposed to walk with the girl.

"She ain't ready to go yet," said Ashgrave, with a strong indication that the fact need not interfere with Barnaby's departure.

The earnest thanks which Ashgrave gave him for his help in saving the hay, manoeuvred him out of the