One morning when Mrs. Blake was just about to put her bread in the oven, Nancy, with a basket on her arm, appeared at the kitchen door. Bidden to come in, she did so, rather hesitatingly.

“I jist stopped for a minute, Miz’ Blake. I’m a-goin’ up to the Double S. Miss Sapphy’s sent me to pick some laurel for her.” She spoke wanderingly and rather mournfully, Mrs. Blake noted.

“Is Mother not feeling well? She always likes to drive up the road and see the laurel herself.”

“Yes, mam. Maybe she don’t feel right well. You’re jist puttin’ your bread in, ain’t you.” There was no question in her voice, but sorrowful comment.

“The oven’s not hot yet, but it soon will be.” Mrs. Blake lifted the stove lid to put in another stick.

Nancy gasped and put out her hand beseechingly. “Oh, Miz’ Blake, wait a minute, please mam do! I don’t hardly know what to say, but I’m afraid to go up the holler road this mornin’.”

“Afraid? What of? Blacksnakes?”

“No’m, I ain’t afraid of no snakes.”

Mrs. Blake dropped the stick back into the wood-box. The girl was afraid of something, sure enough. One could see it in her face, and in the shivering, irresolute way she stood there.

After covering her loaves with a white cloth, Mrs. Blake took her seat by the kitchen table. “Now sit down, Nancy, and tell me what’s ailing you. Don’t stand there cowerin’, but sit down and speak out.”

“Yes’m,” meekly. “It ain’t I minds goin’ up there; it’s jist a nice walk. Only Miss Sapphy told me to go right before Mr. Martin.”

“Well, what’s that got to do with it?”

“She knowed he was goin’ ridin’ this mornin’. He had his leggin’s on.”

She stopped, and Mrs. Blake waited. In a moment Nancy burst out: “Oh, Miz’ Blake, he’ll shorely ride up there an’ overtake me in the woods!” She hid her face in her hands and began to cry. “You don’t know how it is, mam. He’s always a-pesterin’ me, ‘deed he is. I has to do his room for him, an’ he’s always after me. I’m ‘shamed to tell you. He’ll be shore to overtake me up in the woods. I lost heart when I seen you was about to bake. I thought maybe you’d walk along up with me.”

“The baking can wait. I’ll just check the damper and go along with you. I’d like to see that laurel myself. Now you quit crying. I’ll go upstairs and slip on another dress.”

Once in her own chamber, Mrs. Blake sat down to think. Her face was flushed, and her eyes blazed with indignation. She could not remember when Mrs. Colbert had not driven daily up the Hollow road to the “Double S” while the laurel was in bloom. Of course she would take her usual drive up there tomorrow, as she had done yesterday. But today she was sending Nancy. Why?

Mrs. Colbert had turned on Nancy; that was well known. Now she had the worst rake in the country staying in her house, and she was sending the girl up into the woods alone, after giving him fair warning. Did her mother really want to ruin Nancy? Could her spite go so far as that?

Rachel Blake closed her eyes and leaned her head and arms forward on her dresser top. She had known her mother to show great kindness to her servants, and, sometimes, cold cruelty. But she had never known her to do anything quite so ugly as this, if Nancy’s tale were true. But there was no time to puzzle it out now. She must meet the present occasion. She quickly changed her dress and came downstairs with a basket on her arm.

“Now step along, Nancy, and brighten up. We’ll go flower-picking to please ourselves.”

It was still early morning; a little too warm in the sun, but wonderfully soft and pleasant in the shade. The winding country road which climbed from the post office to Timber Ridge was then, and for sixty years afterward, the most beautiful stretch in the northwestern turnpike. It was cut against gravelly hillsides bright with mica and thinly overgrown with spikes of pennyroyal, patches of rue, and small shrubs. But on the left side of the road, going west, the hillsides fell abruptly down to a mountain stream flowing clear at the bottom of a winding ravine. The country people called this the Hollow, or “Holler,” road. On the far side of the creek the hills were shaded by forest trees, tall and not too thickly set: hickory and chestnut and white oak, here and there hemlocks of great height. The ground beneath them was covered with bright green moss and flat mats of wintergreen full of red berries. Out of the damp moss between the exposed tree roots, where the shade was deep, the maidenhair fern grew delicately.

The road followed the ravine, climbing all the way, until at the “Double S” it swung out in four great loops round hills of solid rock; rock which the destroying armament of modern road-building has not yet succeeded in blasting away. The four loops are now denuded and ugly, but motorists, however unwillingly, must swing round them if they go on that road at all.

In the old times, when Nancy and Mrs. Blake were alive, and for sixty years afterward, those now-naked hills were rich in verdure, the winding ravine was deep and green, the stream at the bottom flowed bright and soothingly vocal. A tramp pedlar from town, or a poor farmer, coming down on foot from his stony acres to sell a coonskin, stopped to rest here, or walked lingeringly. When the countrymen mentioned the place in speech, if it were but to say: “I’d jist got as fur as the Double e-S-S,” their voices t............