“You varmint, I’ll git you this time!” Sally stooped for another piece of wood. The cat darted through the door ahead of the flying missile.

“I’ll kill you yit!” Sally shouted after it. “An’ he kain’t hinder me neither!”

She sat down heavily and wiped the sweat from her forehead.

It was several minutes before the woman rose from the chair and crossed the dot-trot to the sleeping- room. Throwing her faded sun-bonnet into a corner, she loosened her hair and began to brush it.

Sally Gantt was neither pretty nor handsome. But in a country peopled solely by pine-woods crackers, her black hair and eyes, clear skin and white teeth, made her stand out. She was a woman, and young. To a man, also young, who for two years had seen no face unpainted with the sallow hue of chills and fever, no eyes except faded blue ones framed by white, straggling lashes, no sound teeth, and the unsound ones stained always by the snuff stick, she might easily appear alluring.

With feminine deftness Sally re-coiled her hair. She took from a wooden peg a blue calico dress, its printed pattern as yet unbleached by the fierce suns. It gave to her slender figure some touch of grace. From beneath the bed she drew a pair of heavy brogans; a shoe fashioned, doubtless, to match the listless nature of the people who most use them, slipping on or off without hindrance from lace or buckle. As a final touch, she fastened about her head a piece of blue ribbon, the band of cheap silk making the flash in her black eyes the brighter.

Sally left the house and started across the rubbish-littered yard. A short distance from the cabin she stopped to look about her.

“I’m dog-tired of it all,” she said fiercely. “I hates the house. I hates the whole place, an’ more’n all I hates Jim.”

She turned, scowling, and walked between the rows of growing corn that reached to the edge of the clearing. Here began the pinewoods, the one saving touch nature has given to this land. Beneath the grateful shade she hastened her steps. The trees stood in endless disordered ranks, rising straight and bare of branch until high aloft their spreading tops caught the sunlight.

A quarter of a mile brought her to the lowland. She went down the slight decline and stepped within the cane-brake. Here gloom closed about her. The thickly growing cane reached to twice her height. Above the cane the cypress spread its branches, draped with the sad grey moss of the South. No sun’s ray struggled through the rank foliage to lighten the sodden earth beneath. Sally picked her way slowly through the swamp, peering cautiously beyond each fallen log before venturing a further step. Crawfish scuttled backward from her path to slip down the mud chimneys of their homes. The black earth and decaying plants filled the hot, still air with noisome odours. Thousands of hidden insects sounded through the dank stretches their grating calls. Slimy water oozed from beneath the heavy soles of her brogans, green and purple bubbles were left in each footprint, bubbles with iridescent oily skins.

As she went around a sharp turn she was caught up and lifted clear from the ground in the arms of a young man—a boy of twenty or therabout.

“Oh, Bob, you scairt me—you certainly air rough!” Without words he kissed her again and again.

“Now, Bob, you quit! Ain’t you had enough?”

“Could I ever have enough? Oh, Sally, I love you so!” The words trembled from the boy.

“You certainly ain’t like none of ’em ’round hyar, Bob.” There was some pride in Sally’s drawling voice. “I never seed none of the men folks act with gals like you does.”