still unafraid, sat down beside Hale and the old man
brought out a bottle of moonshine.

"I reckon I can still trust ye," he said.

"I reckon you can," laughed Hale.

The liquor was as fiery as ever, but it was grateful, and again the
old man took nearly a tumbler full plying Hale, meanwhile, about the
happenings in town the day before--but Hale could tell him nothing that
he seemed not already to know.

"It was quar," the old mountaineer said. "I've seed two men with the
drap on each other and both afeerd to shoot, but I never heerd of sech a
ring-around-the-rosy as eight fellers with bead on one another and not a
shoot shot. I'm glad I wasn't thar."

He frowned when Hale spoke of the Red Fox.

"You can't never tell whether that ole devil is fer ye or agin ye, but
I've been plum' sick o' these doin's a long time now and sometimes
I think I'll just pull up stakes and go West and git out of
hit--altogether."

"How did you learn so much about yesterday--so soon?"

"Oh, we hears things purty quick in these mountains. Little Dave
Tolliver come over here last night."

"Yes," broke in Bub, "and he tol' us how you carried Loretty from town
on a mule behind ye, and she jest a-sassin' you, an' as how she said she
was a-goin' to git you fer HER sweetheart."

Hale glanced by chance at the little girl. Her face was scarlet, and a
light dawned.

"An' sis, thar, said he was a-tellin' lies--an' when she growed up she
said she was a-goin' to marry---"

Something snapped like a toy-pistol and Bub howled. A little brown hand
had whacked him across the mouth, and the girl flashed indoors without
a word. Bub got to his feet howling with pain and rage and started after
her, but the old man caught him:

"Set down, boy! Sarved you right fer blabbin' things that hain't yo'
business." He shook with laughter.

Jealousy! Great heavens--Hale thought--in that child, and for him!

"I knowed she was cryin' 'bout something like that. She sets a great
store by you, an' she's studied them books you sent her plum' to pieces
while you was away. She ain't nothin' but a baby, but in sartain ways
she's as old as her mother was when she died." The amazing secret was
out, and the little girl appeared no more until supper time, when she
waited on the table, but at no time would she look at Hale or speak to
him again. For a while the two men sat on the porch talking of the feud
and the Gap and the coal on the old man's place, and Hale had no t