old miller had reached the Pine,
and there Hale stopped. Any farther, the old man told him, he would go
only at the risk of his life from Dave or Bub, or even from any Falin
who happened to be hanging around in the bushes, for Hale was hated
equally by both factions now.

"I'll wait up here until noon, Uncle Billy," said Hale. "Ask her, for
God's sake, to come up here and see me."

"All right. I'll axe her, but--" the old miller shook his head.
Breakfastless, except for the munching of a piece of chocolate, Hale
waited all the morning with his black horse in the bushes some thirty
yards from the Lonesome Pine. Every now and then he would go to the tree
and look down the path, and once he slipped far down the trail and aside
to a spur whence he could see the cabin in the cove. Once his hungry
eyes caught sight of a woman's figure walking through the little garden,
and for an hour after it disappeared into the house he watched for it to
come out again. But nothing more was visible, and he turned back to the
trail to see Uncle Billy laboriously climbing up the slope. Hale
waited and ran down to meet him, his face and eyes eager and his lips
trembling, but again Uncle Billy was shaking his head.

"No use, John," he said sadly. "I got her out on the porch and axed her,
but she won't come."

"She won't come at all?"

"John, when one o' them Tollivers gits white about the mouth, an' thar
eyes gits to blazin' and they KEEPS QUIET--they're plumb out o' reach
o' the Almighty hisself. June skeered me. But you mustn't blame her jes'
now. You see, you got up that guard. You ketched Rufe and hung him, and
she can't help thinkin' if you hadn't done that, her old daddy wouldn't
be in thar on his back nigh to death. You mustn't blame her, John--she's
most out o' her head now."

"All right, Uncle Billy. Good-by." Hale turned, climbed sadly back to
his horse and sadly dropped down the other side of the mountain and on
through the rocky gap-home.

A week later he learned from the doctor that the chances were even that
old Judd would get well, but the days went by with no word of June.
Through those days June wrestled with her love for Hale and her loyalty
to her father, who, sick as he was, seemed to have a vague sense of the
trouble within her and shrewdly fought it by making her daily promise
that she would never leave him. For as old Judd got better, June's
fierceness against Hale melted and her love came out the stronger,
beca