“Can’t stop,” said Scattergood.  “I was lookin’ for Jed.”

“Jed’s gone,” she replied, shortly, the sullen expression returning to her face. “’He won’t be back ’fore noon.”

“Uh-huh!...  Wa-al, I calc’late I kin keep on drawin’ my breath till then—­if you kin.  I call to mind the time when you was all-fired oneasy if Jed got away from you for six hours in a stretch.”

“Them times is gone,” she said, shortly.

“Shucks!” said Scattergood.

“They be,” she said, fiercely.  “Hain’t no use tryin’ to hide it.  Jed and me is about through.  Nothin’ but fussin’ and backbitin’ and maneuvering’.  He don’t care f’r me no more like he used to, and—­”

“You don’t set sich a heap of store by him,” Scattergood interrupted.

Martha hesitated.  “I do,” she said, slowly.  “But I can’t put up with it no more.”

“Jed’s fault—­mostly,” said Scattergood, as one speaks who utters an accepted fact.

“No more ’n mine,” she said, with a sudden flash.  “I dunno what’s got into us, Mr. Baines, but we no sooner git into the same room than it commences.  ’Tain’t no-body’s fault—­it jest is.”

“Um!...  Kinder like to have things the way they used to be?”

“Oh, Mr. Baines!” Her eyes filled.  “Them first two-three years!  Jed was the best man a woman ever had.”

“Hain’t drinkin’, is he?”

“Never touches a drop.”

“Jest his nasty temper,” said Scattergood, casually.

“No sich thing....  It’s jest happened so.  We can’t git on, and I’m through tryin’.  One of us is gain’ to git out of this house.  I’ve made up my mind.”  She started untying her apron.  “I’m a-goin’ right now.  It’ll be off’n my mind then, and I kin sort of git a fresh start.  I’m goin’ right now and pack.”

“Kind of hasty, hain’t you?...  Now, Marthy, as a special favor to me I wish you’d stay, maybe two days more.  I got a special reason.  If you was to go this mornin’ it ’u’d upset my plans.  After Sattidy you kin do as you like, and maybe it’s best you should part.  But I do wisht you could see your way to stayin’ till Sattidy.”

“I don’t see why, Mr. Baines, but if it’ll be any good to you, I’ll do it.  But not a minute after Sattidy—­now mind that!”

“Much ’bleeged, Marthy.  G’-by, Marthy.  G’-by.”

On Friday Scattergood was invisible in Coldriver village, for he had started away before dawn, driving his sway-backed horse over the mountain roads to the southward.  He notified nobody of his going, unless it was Mandy, his wife, and even to her he did not make apparent his errand.

Before noon he was in Bailey and stopping before the small white house in which Mrs. Patterson managed by ingenuity to fit in a husband, a mother-in-law, an aged father, seven children of her own, the Conroy orphan, and a constantly changing number of cats.  Nobody could have done it but Mrs. Patterson.  The house resembled one of those puzzle boxes containing a number of curiously sawn pieces of wood, which, once removed, can be returned and fitted into place again only by some one who knows the secret.