"No true love there can be,
Without its dread penalty, jealousy!"
A grateful odor from the white blooming wild cherry by the fence of the James potato-lot, was wafted to Miss Lucy, as, with her milk-buckets she came out into the dew-wet yard at five o'clock one morning well on toward the end of May. But she was not cognizant of its sweetness. Her face was pale, restless—harassed, as she paused a moment with her eyes on the sloping plowed fields across the road. The tobacco barn of Castle with its metal roof shimmered like silver in the bright sun: the fields showed flecks of green on their raw brown,—the newly set tobacco.
"I reckon he's a settin' tobacco, too, 'way down that away," she mused sorrowfully, turning her face toward the north: "and maybe he'll overwork and make hisse'f sick. I wisht I could hear from him some way. I ain't heard sence Pa—sence Pa ordered him never to come about us any more! Seems like he might write, but he's afraid of gittin' me in trouble, I guess, ef he sent me a letter through the mail. Pa and Nancy'd—"
The spider curled on the web that hung from the top rail of the gate to the post, felt a heavy drop on his back, and pirouetted away in fright. But a long mournful bellow from beyond the barn prevented the fall of any more drops on his web.
"Poor old Belle! She must be a gittin' worse," thought Miss Lucy, hurrying to the barn-lot, in which, the night before, she had left the roan cow that for more than a week had drooped and languished. To her surprise, the cow was pacing back and forth, restless as something caged, while the other cattle in the adjoining grass field, clustered not far from the boundary fence, regarding their sick mate in a peculiar, half-fearful fashion. Miss Lucy set down her buckets, and flew to the house.
"O Pa!" she cried: "I wisht you'd come down to the barn a minute. Old Belle's worse, I believe, and she's actin' so strange I am afraid to milk the other cows in the lot with her!"
"Aw, she won't hurt ye, Lucy," grumbled the old man, rising reluctantly. "Have the mar's come up to be fed yit?"
When Mr. James had seen the sick beast, he was much vexed.
"The best cow on the place, exceptin' the one you claim, Lucy Ann, and me not able to work with her! Now as soon as you git the milkin' done, and eat, you go git old man Doggett. Maybe he can do somethin' fer her."