"Haven't been quarrelling with anybody, have you?"
"No," said Faith, giving an amused look to this view of the subject.
"Do I look quarrelsome, Mr. Simlins?"
"I don't know how you look!" said the farmer. "I aint anything of an exposition. You'll have to ask somebody else. There's some words too hard for me to spell and pro-nounce. Where have you been?"
"Just to carry Sally Loundes some medicine mother had for her."
"Where are you goin' now?"
"Home."
"Goin' alone?"
"Why, yes. Why not?"
"Don' know," said Mr. Simlins,—"only I'm going part way, and I'll see nothin' happens to you as long as I'm in your consort."
It was a wild place enough to make company pleasant. Dark clumps of forest-trees on one hand grew near together, and the spaces between, though cleared, looked hardly less wild; for vines and sumach and ferns had taken possession. The sun's rays yet lay warm on the rolling downs, the sere grass and the purplish blackberry vines, and sparkled on the waves beyond; but when Mr. Simlins and Faith struck into the woods for a 'short cut,' the shadowy solitude closed them in on all sides. Softly their steps moved over the fallen pine leaves, or rustled through the shreds of autumn finery that lay beneath oak and maple, and nothing else but birds and squirrels broke the stillness till they were near the further edge of the wood. There they heard a soft murmur of voices.