ry I couldn't get back sooner."

"Huh!" said June scornfully, and he knew Uncle Billy in his guess as to
the trouble was far afield, and so he tried another tack.

"I've been over to the county seat and I saw lots of your kinfolks over
there." She showed no curiosity, no surprise, and still she did not look
up at him.

"I met your cousin, Loretta, over there and I carried her home behind me
on an old mule"--Hale paused, smiling at the remembrance--and still she
betrayed no interest.

"She's a mighty pretty girl, and whenever I'd hit that old---"

"She hain't!"--the words were so shrieked out that Hale was bewildered,
and then he guessed that the falling out between the fathers was more
serious than he had supposed.

"But she isn't as nice as you are," he added quickly, and the girl's
quivering mouth steadied, the tears stopped in her vexed dark eyes and
she lifted them to him at last.

"She ain't?"

"No, indeed, she ain't."

For a while they rode along again in silence. June no longer avoided his
eyes now, and the unspoken question in her own presently came out:

"You won't let Uncle Rufe bother me no more, will ye?"

"No, indeed, I won't," said Hale heartily. "What does he do to you?"

"Nothin'--'cept he's always a-teasin' me, an'--an' I'm afeered o' him."

"Well, I'll take care of Uncle Rufe."

"I knowed YOU'D say that," she said. "Pap and Dave always laughs at me,"
and she shook her head as though she were already threatening her
bad uncle with what Hale would do to him, and she was so serious and
trustful that Hale was curiously touched. By and by he lifted one flap
of his saddle-pockets again.

"I've got some candy here for a nice little girl," he said, as though
the subject had not been mentioned before. "It's for you. Won't you have
some?"

"I reckon I will," she said with a happy smile.

Hale watched her while she munched a striped stick of peppermint. Her
crimson bonnet had fallen from her sunlit hair and straight down from it
to her bare little foot with its stubbed toe just darkening with dried
blood, a sculptor would have loved the rounded slenderness in the
curving long lines that shaped her brown throat, her arms and her hands,
which were prettily shaped but so very dirty as to the nails, and her
dangling bare leg. Her teeth were even and white, and most of them
flashed when her red lips smiled. Her lashes were long and gave a
touching softness to her eyes even when she was looking qui