She grew anxious.

“Don’t it cost money to git married?”

“I reckon.”

The subject was delicate.

“Mart, I ain’t got me a dime. Have you got ary cash-money?”

Turning his back to the driving rain he emptied his pockets. There were two paper dollars and some loose silver that proved too complicated to count accurately. It did not seem to total another dollar.

“Mart, I ain’t too pertickler about standin’ up in front of a parson. Hit’s sort of a church-business, like, and I don’t know nothin’ abouten sich things. We could fix to git married some time when you got plenty cash-money.”

“I’d ruther you’d feel right about it, Florry. Hit shore don’t make no difference to me. When we was sittin’ together last night with the air so hot and restless, I studied then on you and me goin’ off. All two of us so kind o’ rabbity, like your daddy said. I shore gits lonesome, times, like.”

She nodded.

“I shore feels all right about it. I’ll be your ol’ woman and you’ll be my ol’ man, right on. I ain’t no leetle mite skeered.”

He put one hand on her bony shoulder and peered fiercely at her.

“Leave me tell you,” he said, “I ain’t studyin’ none on quittin’ you, no ways, no how—no time——”

They made a new venture into the storm, working always south.

“If we don’t make Levy County,” he called, “I know a ’shiner’ll put us up. He done borried my gun and I got to git it one time. Mought as well git it now. These high winds this time o’ year is like to last three, four days.”

“And then them fine, blue days,” she shrilled back. “Jest breezylike and clare, and no red-bugs or skeeters.”

“That’s right.”

They fought on.

“I shore feel mean about leavin’ ol’ Sport,” she said. “Pappy’ll starve him to death.”

“Ain’t he a good rabbit dog? Cain’t he ketch hisself rabbits?”

“I reckon.” She pondered. “I reckon ol’ Sport kin make out on rabbits.”

II

Florry said, “A marsh sure is the crawlin’est thing.”

She was a little homesick for the high piney-woods. The marsh seemed low, as though she were living in a sink-hole. The air was oppressive. The October night when Mart had brought her to the cabin in the lakeside hammock had startled her by its manner of falling. She had been looking idly at the streamers of salmon and gold in the sky above the close-set live oaks and sweet gums. Mart was repairing the sagging square shutters, so that they might be swung to, like casements, and hooked from the inside. The night air must be kept out, for it bred fever.

Suddenly, it was twilight, and in a moment, dark.

A brief panic touched her. The day was gone, and she was unable to see its going. All her life she had watched the sun burn fire-red through the long-leafed pines; drop inch by inch to a discernible oblivion. The close vegetation of the hammock turned the good sun unfriendly, a little treacherous.