d dropped it into his hands.

"I reckon that damn Hale was the man who found out that you heard Rufe
say that. I'd like to know how--I'd like to git my hands on the feller
as told him."

June opened her lips in simple justice to clear Hale of that charge, but
she saw such a terrified appeal in her step-mother's face that she
kept her peace, let Hale suffer for that, too, and walked out into her
garden. Never once had her piano been opened, her books had lain unread,
and from her lips, during those days, came no song. When she was not
at work, she was brooding in her room, or she would walk down to Uncle
Billy's and sit at the mill with him while the old man would talk in
tender helplessness, or under the honeysuckle vines with old Hon, whose
brusque kindness was of as little avail. And then, still silent, she
would get wearily up and as quietly go away while the two old friends,
worried to the heart, followed her sadly with their eyes. At other times
she was brooding in her room or sitting in her garden, where she was
now, and where she found most comfort--the garden that Hale had planted
for her-where purple asters leaned against lilac shrubs that would
flower for the first time the coming spring; where a late rose
bloomed, and marigolds drooped, and great sunflowers nodded and giant
castor-plants stretched out their hands of Christ, And while June thus
waited the passing of the days, many things became clear to her: for the
grim finger of reality had torn the veil from her eyes and let her see
herself but little changed, at the depths, by contact with John Male's
world, as she now saw him but little changed, at the depths, by contact
with hers. Slowly she came to see, too, that it was his presence in the
Court Room that made her tell the truth, reckless of the consequences,
and she came to realize that she was not leaving the mountains because
she would go to no place where she could not know of any danger that, in
the present crisis, might threaten John Hale.

And Hale saw only that in the Court Room she had drawn her skirts aside,
that she had looked at him once and then had brushed past his helping
hand. It put him in torment to think of what her life must be now,
and of how she must be suffering. He knew that she would not leave her
father in the crisis that was at hand, and after it was all over--what
then? His hands would still be tied and he would be even more helpless
than he had ever dreamed possible. To be