her the sound of a care-free whistle. Presently her brother sauntered
into view, a dead squirrel in his hand. The tails of several others
bulged from the game bag by his side. The sister did not need to be told
that four out of five had been shot through the head.

"Thought I heard voices. Was some one with you, sis?" the boy asked.

"Who'd be with me here?" she countered lazily.

A second time she was finding refuge in the for-get-me-nots.

He was a barefoot little fellow, slim and hard as a nail. In his hand he
carried an old-fashioned rifle almost as long as himself. There was a
lingering look of childishness in his tanned, boyish face. His hands and
feet were small and shapely as those of a girl. About him hung the stolid
imperturbability of the Southern mountaineer. Times were when his blue
eyes melted to tenderness or mirth; yet again the cunning of the jungle
narrowed them to slits hard, as jade. Already, at the age of fourteen, he
had been shot at from ambush, had wounded a Roush at long range, had
taken part in a pitched battle. The law of the feud was tempering his
heart to implacability.

The keen gaze of the boy rested on her. Ever since word had reached the
Clantons of how 'Lindy had "carried on" with Dave Roush at the dance on
Lonesome her people had watched her suspiciously. The thing she had done
had been a violation of the hill code and old Clay Clanton had thrashed
her with a cowhide till she begged for mercy. Jimmie had come home from
the still to find her writhing in passionate revolt. The boy had been
furious at his father; yet had admitted the substantial justice of the
punishment. Its wisdom he doubted. For he knew his sister to be stubborn
as old Clay himself, and he feared lest they drive her to the arms of Bad
Dave Roush.

"I reckon you was talkin' to yo'self, mebbe," he suggested.

"I reckon."

They walked home together along a path through the rhododendrons. The
long, slender legs of the girl moved rhythmically and her arms swung like
pendulums. Life in the open had given her the litheness and the grace of
a woodland creature. The mountain woman is cheated of her youth almost
before she has learned to enjoy it. But 'Lindy was still under eighteen.
Her warm vitality still denied the coming of a day when she would be a
sallow, angular snuff-chewer.

Within sight of the log cabin the girl lingered for a moment by the
sassafras bushes near the spring. Some deep craving for sympathy moved