s were rough when they came down with the log drives in the
spring. But they only fought among themselves. And they did not stop
in the hills. They hurried on down to the towns where they could spend
their money.

What had Jeffrey to fear?

Yet, he must have meant a good deal. He would not have spoken to her
unless he had good reason to think that something might happen to
him.

Withal, Ruth was not deceived. She knew the temper of the hills. The
men were easy-going. They were slow of speech. They were generally
ruled by their more energetic women. But they or their fathers had
all been fighting men, like her own father. And they were rooted in
the soil of the hills. Any man or any power that attempted to drive
them from the land which their hands had cleared and made into homes,
where the bones of their fathers and mothers lay, would have to reckon
with them as bitter, stubborn fighting men.

Jeffrey Whiting was just coming to the bare top of the ridge. In
another moment he would drop down the other side out of sight. She
wondered whether he would turn and wave to her; or had he forgotten
that she would surely be standing where he had left her?

He had not forgotten. He turned and waved briskly to her. Then
he stepped down quickly out of sight. His act was brusque and
businesslike. It showed that he remembered. He could hardly have
seen her standing there in all the green by the pond. He had just
known that she was there. But it showed something else, too. He had
plunged down over the edge of the hill upon a business with which
his mind was filled, to the exclusion, almost, of her and of
everything else.

The girl did not feel any of the little pique or resentment that might
have been very natural. It was so that she would wish him to go about
the business that was going to be so serious for all of them. But it
gave her a new and startling flash of insight into what was coming.

She had always thought of her hills as the place where peace lived.
Out in the great crowded market places of the world she knew men
fought each other for money. But why do that in the hills? There was a
little for all. And a man could only get as much as his own labour and
good judgment would make for him out of the land.

Now she saw that it was not a matter of hills or of cities. Wherever,
in the hills or the city or in the farthest desert, there was wealth
or the hope of wealth, there greedy men with power would surely come
to lo