“June!”
“Shore! My, but she'll be glad to see ye! She's always talkin' about ye. You told her you was comin' back an' ever'body told her you wasn't: but that leetle gal al'ays said she KNOWED you was, because you SAID you was. She's growed some—an' if she ain't purty, well I'd tell a man! You jes' tie yo' hoss up thar behind the mill so she can't see it, an' git inside the mill when she comes round that bend thar. My, but hit'll be a surprise fer her.”
The old man chuckled so cheerily that Hale, to humour him, hitched his horse to a sapling, came back and sat in the door of the mill. The old man knew all about the trouble in town the day before.
“I want to give ye a leetle advice. Keep yo' mouth plum' shut about this here war. I'm Jestice of the Peace, but that's the only way I've kept outen of it fer thirty years; an' hit's the only way you can keep outen it.”
“Thank you, I mean to keep my mouth shut, but would you mind—”
“Git in!” interrupted the old man eagerly. “Hyeh she comes.” His kind old face creased into a welcoming smile, and between the logs of the mill Hale, inside, could see an old sorrel horse slowly coming through the lights and shadows down the road. On its back was a sack of corn and perched on the sack was a little girl with her bare feet in the hollows behind the old nag's withers. She was looking sidewise, quite hidden by a scarlet poke-bonnet, and at the old man's shout she turned the smiling face of little June. With an answering cry, she struck the old nag with a switch and before the old man could rise to help her down, slipped lightly to the ground.
“Why, honey,” he said, “I don't know whut I'm goin' to do 'bout yo' corn. Shaft's broke an' I can't do no grindin' till to-morrow.”
“Well, Uncle Billy, we ain't got a pint o' meal in the house,” she said. “You jes' got to LEND me some.”
“All right, honey,” said the old man, and he cleared his throat as a signal for Hale.
The little girl was pushing her bonnet back when Hale stepped into sight and, unstartled, unsmiling, unspeaking, she looked steadily at him—one hand motionless for a moment on her bronze heap of hair and then slipping down past her cheek to clench the other tightly. Uncle Billy was bewildered.