Judith of the Cumberlands

								

attained desires! The stars in their courses pivot and swing on these
subtle attractions, ancient as themselves. Judith Barrier, tearing the
gaudy ribbon from her hat and casting it upon the road under her horse's
feet, stood to learn what the priests of Isis knew thousands of years
ago, that red is the symbol of pleasure and of mere animal comfort, while
blue is the colour of pure reason.
Halfway up the trail they rode into a cloud that rested trembling on the
mountain-side, passed through it and emerged upon fitful sunlight. Near
the top there came a sudden shower which descended with the souse of an
overturned bucket. It won small attention from Judith, but Pete and Beck
resented it in mule fashion, with a laying back of ears and lashing out
of heels. These amenities were exchanged for the most part across the
intervening sorrel nag and his rider, and Selim replied promptly and in
kind, almost unseating Judith.
"You Selim!" she cried jerking the rein. "You feisty Pete! You no-account
Beck! What ails you-all? Cain't you behave?" and once more she lapsed
into dreaming. It was Selim who, wise and old, stopped at Aunt Nancy
Card's gate and gave Judith an opportunity to descend if such were her
preference.
On the porch of the cabin sat a tall, lean, black-eyed old man smoking
his pipe, Jephthah Turrentine himself. Nancy Card, a dry, brown little
sparrow of a woman, occupied a chair opposite him, and negotiated a pipe
quite as elderly and evil-smelling as his own.
The kerchief folded about her neck was notably white; her clean
check-apron rustled with starch; but the half-grey hair crinkling
rebelliously from its loose coil was never confined by anything more
rigorous than a tucking comb. In moments of stress this always slipped
down, and had to be vigorously replaced, so that stray strands were apt
to be tossing about her eyes--fearless, direct blue eyes, that looked out
of her square, wrinkled, weather-beaten little face with the sincere gaze
of an urchin. Back of her chair lay a bundle of white-oak splits for use
in her by-trade of basket-weaver; above them hung bundles of drying
herbs, for Nancy was a sick-nurse and a bit of an herb-doctor. She had
made a hard and a more or less losing fight against poverty--the men folk
of these hardy, valiant little women seem predestined to be shiftless.
It came back to Judith dimly as she looked at them--she was in a mood to
remember such things--that her uncle had courted Nancy Card when these
two were young people, that they had quarrelled, both had married, reared
families, and been widowed; and they were quarrelling still! Acrimonious
debate with Nancy was evidently such sweet pain that old Jephthah sought
every opportunity for it, and the sudden shower in the vicinity of her
cabin had offered him an excuse to-day.
Nancy did not confine her practice to what she would have called humans,
but doctored a horse or a cow with equal success. One cold spring a