land, some feller called it."

Dave had done his work well. June rose unsteadily, and with one hand on
her heart and the other clutching the railing of the porch, she crept
noiselessly along it, staggered like a wounded thing around the
chimney, through the garden and on, still clutching her heart, to the
woods--there to sob it out on the breast of the only mother she had ever
known.

Dave was gone when she came back from the woods--calm, dry-eyed, pale.
Her step-mother had kept her dinner for her, and when she said she
wanted nothing to eat, the old woman answered something querulous to
which June made no answer, but went quietly to cleaning away the dishes.
For a while she sat on the porch, and presently she went into her room
and for a few moments she rocked quietly at her window. Hale was going
away next day, and when he came back she would be gone and she would
never see him again. A dry sob shook her body of a sudden, she put
both hands to her head and with wild eyes she sprang to her feet and,
catching up her bonnet, slipped noiselessly out the back door. With
hands clenched tight she forced herself to walk slowly across the
foot-bridge, but when the bushes hid her, she broke into a run as though
she were crazed and escaping a madhouse. At the foot of the spur she
turned swiftly up the mountain and climbed madly, with one hand tight
against the little cross at her throat. He was going away and she must
tell him--she must tell him--what? Behind her a voice was calling, the
voice that pleaded all one night for her not to leave him, that had
made that plea a daily prayer, and it had come from an old man--wounded,
broken in health and heart, and her father. Hale's face was before her,
but that voice was behind, and as she climbed, the face that she was
nearing grew fainter, the voice she was leaving sounded the louder in
her ears, and when she reached the big Pine she dropped helplessly at
the base of it, sobbing. With her tears the madness slowly left her,
the old determination came back again and at last the old sad peace. The
sunlight was slanting at a low angle when she rose to her feet and stood
on the cliff overlooking the valley--her lips parted as when she stood
there first, and the tiny drops drying along the roots of her dull gold
hair. And being there for the last time she thought of that time when
she was first there--ages ago. The great glare of light that she looked
for then had come and gone. There wa