During her illness her hair had fallen out so fast that it had been cut off, and now lay in soft rings around her forehead, giving her more the look of a child than of a girl of twenty, as the plate on her coffin indicated.  “Eudora, aged twenty,” was all there was on it, and glancing at it Mr. Mason wondered there was no other name.  Jake saw the look and whispered.  “I wan’t gwine to lie an’ put on ‘Eudora Harris,’ for she ain’t Eudora Harris, an’ I didn’t know t’other name for shoo.  Ain’t she lovely!”

“She is, indeed,” Mr. Mason said, feeling the moisture in his eyes, as he looked at the young, innocent face on which there was no trace of guilt.

He was sure of that without Jake’s repeated assertion, “Fo’ God, it’s all right, for she tole me so.  Mostly, she’d say nothin’.  She’d promised she wouldn’t, but jess fo’ she died she said agen to me, ’I tole him I’d keep dark till he come for me, but it’s all right.  Send for Elder Covil ‘crost the river.  He knows.’  I’ve tole you this afore, I reckon, but my mind is so full I git rattled.”

By this time the bent figure sitting in the rocking-chair, near the coffin began to show signs of life and whimper a little.

“’Scuse me,” Jake said, pulling a shawl more squarely around her shoulders and straightening her up.  “Mas’r Mason, this is ole Miss Lucy.  Miss Lucy, this is Mas’r Mason, come to ’tend Miss Dory’s funeral.  Peart up a little, can’t you, and speak to him.”

There didn’t seem to be much “peart up” in the woman, who began at once to cry.  Instantly Mandy Ann started up and wiped her face, and settled her cap, and taking the trumpet screamed into it that she was to behave herself and speak to the gemman.

“Dory’s dead,” she moaned, and subsided into her shawl and cap, with a faint kind of cry.

“Dory’s dead,” was repeated, in a voice very different from that of the old woman—­a child’s clear, sweet voice—­and turning, Mr. Mason saw a little dark-haired, dark-eyed girl standing by Mandy Ann.

Mr. Mason was fond of children, and stooping down he kissed the child, who drew back and hid behind Jake.

“Me ’fraid,” she said, covering her face with her hands, and looking with her bright eyes through her fingers at the stranger.

Something in her eyes attracted and fascinated, and at the same time troubled Mr. Mason, he scarcely knew why.  The old grandmother was certainly demented.  The landlord had said Eudora and the whole family were queer.  Was the child going to be queer, too, and did she show it in her eyes?  They were very large and beautiful, and the long, curling lashes, when she closed them, fell on her cheeks like those of her dead mother, whom she resembled.  She seemed out of place in her surroundings, but he could not talk to her then.  The people in the next room were beginning to get restless, and to talk in low tones of their crops and the weather, and the big alligator caught near the hotel.  It was time to