y held the
picture.

Then, partly because her manner carried conviction against suspicion,
and partly because to enter would be to reveal identities, the voice
shouted back: "No, thank ye, ma'am. I reckon we'll fare on."

CHAPTER XIII

Before Henderson had come that night, Blossom had been trying to study,
but the pages of her book had developed the trick of becoming blurred.

Two faces persisted in rising before her imagination; one, the
reproachful countenance of Bear Cat, whom she ought to love
whole-heartedly; the other, that of Henderson, whom she told herself
she admired only as she might admire the President of the United States
or the man who had written the dictionary--with distant and respectful
appreciation.

"He says I'm all right," she mused, "but I reckon he _knows_ in his
heart that I ain't good enough fer him--ner fer his folks."

Tears sprang into her eyes at the confession, and her reasoning went
upon the rocks of illogic. "In the first place," she irrelevantly
argued, "I'm in love with Bear Cat--an' in the second to think about
Mr. Henderson would be right smart like crying for the moon."

Then Henderson had come; had come asking refuge from danger. He had
declared his love with tumultuous force--and it seemed to Blossom that,
after all, the moon was hers without crying for it.

When she had fed him in silence, because of the possibility of lurking
spies outside, they sat, unmindful of passing hours, before the roar of
the stone hearth and as the man's arms held her close to him she let
her long lashes droop over her eyes and surrendered her hair and lips
to his kisses.

They had no great need of words, but sometimes she raised her lids and
gazed steadfastly into his face, and as the carmine flecks of the blaze
lighted her cheeks, the eyes were wide and unmasked, with a full, yet
proud, surrender.

He thought that for this gift of flower-like beauty and love the
abandonment of his stern opportunism was a cheap exchange. His eyes,
too, were glowing with an ardent light and both were spared the irony
of realization that afterward impulse must again yield to the
censorship of colder considerations. There is nothing more real than an
impossible dream--while it endures.

Once the girl's glance fell on a home-made doll, with a coarse wig of
horse-hair, propped on the mantel-shelf. It was one of those crude
makeshifts which mountain children call poppets, as our
great-grandfathers' gre