_kin_ keer,
Turney. I wasn't sartain afore--but I knowed hit es soon as I begun
prayin' fer ye."

Standing there in the pallid mistiness before dawn, and yielding her
lips to the pressure of his kiss, Blossom felt the almost religious
solemnity of the moment. She was crossing the boundary of acknowledged
love--and he had passed through the stress of terrific struggle before
he had been able to bring her his pledge. His face, now cool, had been
hot with its fevered passion. But she did not know that out of this
moment was to be born transforming elements of change destined to shake
her life and his; to quake the very mountains themselves; to rend the
old order's crust, and finally, after tempest and bloodshed--to bring
the light of a new day. No gift of prophecy told her that, of the
parentage of this declaration of her love and this declaration of his
pledge, was to be born in him a warrior's spirit of crusade which could
only reach victory after all the old vindictive furies had been roused
to wrath--and conquered--and the shadow of tragedy had touched them
both.

And had Bear Cat Stacy, holding her soft cheek pressed to his own, been
able to look even a little way ahead, he would have gone home and
withdrawn the hospitality he had pledged to the guest who slept there.

CHAPTER VII

Because Jerry Henderson viewed the life of the hills through
understanding eyes, certain paradoxes resolved themselves into the
expected. He was not surprised to find under Lone Stacy's rude exterior
an innate politeness which was a thing not of formula but of instinct.

"Would hit pleasure ye," demanded the host casually the next morning,
"ter go along with me up thar an' see that same identical still thet I
tuck sich pains yestiddy ye _shouldn't_ see?" But Henderson shook his
head, smiling.

"No, thank you. I'd rather not see any still that I can avoid. What I
don't know can't get me--or anyone else--into trouble."

Lone Stacy nodded his approval as he said: "I didn't aim ter deny ye no
mark of confi_dence_. I 'lowed I'd ought ter ask ye."

Turner Stacy stood further off from illiteracy than his father. In the
loft which the visitor had shared with him the night before he had
found a copy of the Kentucky Statutes and one of Blackstone's
Commentaries, though neither of them was so fondly thumbed as the life
of Lincoln.

By adroit questioning Jerry elicited the information that the boy had
been as far along the way of le