"Oh, pity!" she cried. "My God, that you should pity me!" She
straightened, and summoned all the spirit that was in her. "I would
rather be called a name than have the pity of you and yours."

"You cannot change it, Mrs. Temple," I answered, and fell back on the
nettle-bark sheets. "You cannot change it," I heard myself repeating, as
though it were another's voice. And I knew that Polly Ann was bending
over me and calling me.

* * * * * * *

"Where did they go, Polly Ann?" I asked.

"Acrost the Mississippi, to the lands of the Spanish King," said Polly
Ann.

"And where in those dominions?" I demanded.

"John Saunders took 'em as far as the Falls," Polly Ann answered. "He
'lowed they was goin' to St. Louis. But they never said a word. I
reckon they'll be hunted as long as they live."

I had thought of them much as I lay on my back recovering from the
fever,--the fever for which Mrs. Temple was to blame. Yet I bore her no
malice. And many other thoughts I had, probing back into childhood
memories for the solving of problems there.

"I knowed ye come of gentlefolks, Davy," Polly Ann had said when we
talked together.