“Well, I suppose I must have acted like a ninny,” she concluded.  “But isn’t he just splendid!” and as Cousin Will’s handsome face, with its daring, kind eyes, came to her vision she felt comforted.  “I don’t believe but what he’ll make every allowance for how excited I was,” said she.  “He seems to understand those things, for all he’s such a large man.  Well, it doesn’t seem as if it could be true.”  With a half sigh Miss Mattie knelt and sent up her modest petition to her Maker and got into her little white bed.

In the meantime Red’s actions would have awakened suspicion.  He hunted around until he found a tin can, then lit a match and rummaged the barn, amid terror-stricken squawks from the inhabitants, the hens.

“One, two, three, four,” he counted.  “Reckon I can last out till morning on that.  Mattie, she’s white people—­just the nicest I ever saw, but she ain’t used to providing for a full-grown man.”

He stepped to the back of the barn and looked about him.  “Nobody can see me from here,” he said, in satisfaction.  Then he scraped together a pile of chips and sticks and built a fire, filled the tin can at the brook, sat it on two stones over the fire, rolled himself a cigarette and waited.  A large, yellow tom-cat came out of the brush and threw his green headlights on him, meaowing tentatively.

“Hello, pussy!” said Red.  “You hungry too?  Well, just wait a minute, and we’ll help that feeling—­like bread, pussy?” The cat gobbled the morsel greedily, came closer and begged for more.  The tin can boiled over.  Red popped the eggs in, puffed his cigarette to a bright coal, and looked at his watch by the light.  “Gee!  Ten minutes more, now!” said he.  “Hardly seems to me as if I could wait.”  He pulled the watch out several times.  “What’s the matter with the damn thing?  I believe it’s stopped,” he growled.  But at last “Time!” he shouted gleefully, kicked the can over and gathered up its treasures in his handkerchief.

“Now, Mr. Cat, we’re going to do some real eating,” said he.  “Just sit right down and make yourself at home—­this is kind of fun, by Jinks!” Down went the eggs and down went the loaf of bread in generous slices, never forgetting a fair share for the cat.

“Woosh!  I feel better!” cried Red, “and now for some sleep.”  He swung up into the hay-loft, spread the blanket on the still fragrant old hay, and rolled himself up in a trice.

“I did a good turn when I came on here,” he mused.  “If I have got only one relation, she’s a dandy—­so pretty and quiet and nice.  She’s a marker for all I’ve got, is Mattie.”

The cat came up, purring and “making bread.”  He sniffed feline fashion at Red’s face.