ise stabled his mount at the cabin of a kinsman and started on
again by a short cut "over the roughs" where a man can travel faster on
foot.

When eventually he entered the door of his house his mother looked
across the dish she was drying to inquire, "Where's yore paw at?"

He told her and, under the sudden scorn in her eyes, he flinched.

"Ye went down thar ter town with him," she accused in the high falsetto
of wrath, "an' ye come back scot free an' abandoned him ter ther
penitenshery an' ye didn't raise a hand ter save him! Ef hit hed of
been me I'd hev brought him home safe or I wouldn't of been hyar myself
ter tell of hit!"

Bear Cat Stacy went over and took the woman's wasted hands in both of
his own. As he looked down on her from his six feet of height there
came into his eyes a gentleness so winning that his expression was one
of surprising and tender sweetness.

"Does ye 'low," he asked softly, "that I'd hev done _thet_ ef he hadn't
p'intedly an' severely bid me do hit?"

He told her the story in all its detail and as she listened no tears
came into her eyes to relieve the hard misery of her face. But when he
had drawn a chair for her to the hearth and she had seated herself
stolidly there, he realized that he must go and remove the evidence
which still remained back there in the laurel thickets. He left her
tearless and haggard of expression, gazing dully ahead of her at the
ashes of the burned-out fire; the gaunt figure of a mountain woman to
whom life is a serial of apprehension.

When he came back at sunset she still sat there, bending tearlessly
forward, and it was not until he had crossed the threshold that he saw
another figure rise from its knees. Blossom Fulkerson had been kneeling
with her arms about the shrunken shoulders--but how long, he did not
know.

"Blossom," he said that evening as he was starting away into banishment
across the Virginia boundary, "I don't know how long I'm a-goin' ter be
gone, but I reckon you knows how I feels. I've done asked Mr. Henderson
ter look atter ye, when he comes back from Louisville. He aims ter see
ter hit that paw gits ther best lawyers ter defend him while he's
thar."

"I reckon then," replied the girl with a faith of hero-worship which
sent a sharp paroxysm of pain into Bear Cat's heart, "thet yore paw
will mighty sartain come cl'ar."

They were standing by the gate of the Stacy house, for Blossom meant to
spend that night with the lone woman who