pack still on his shoulders and his
lips parted in a smile of greeting and friendliness.

"Howdy," he said, but the girl remained motionless, vouchsafing no
response.

"I'm a stranger in these parts," he volunteered easily, using the
vernacular of the hills, "and I've strayed off my course. I was aiming
to go to Lone Stacy's dwelling-house."

Still she remained statuesque and voiceless, so the man went on: "Can
you set me right? There seems to be a sort of a path here. Does it lead
anywhere in particular?"

He took a step nearer and eased his pack to the ground among the briars
of the blackberry bushes.

Abruptly, as if to bar his threatened progress, Blossom moved a little
to the side, obstructing the path. Into her eyes leaped a flame of
Amazonian hostility and her hands clenched themselves tautly at her
sides. Her lips parted and from her throat came a long, mellow cry not
unlike the yodle of the Tyrol. It echoed through the timber and died
away--and again she stood confronting him--wordless!

"I didn't mean to startle you," he declared reassuringly, "I only
wanted information."

Again the far-carrying but musical shout was sent through the quiet of
the forest--his only answer.

"Since you won't answer my questions," said Jerry Henderson, irritated
into capriciousness, "I think I'll see for myself where this trail
leads."

Instantly, then, she planted herself before him, with a violently
heaving bosom and a wrathful quivering of her delicate nostrils, Her
challenge broke tensely from her lips with a note of unyielding
defiance.

"Ye can't pass hyar!"

"So you _can_ talk, after all," he observed coolly. "It's a help to
learn that much at all events."

He had chanced on a path, he realized, which some moonshiner preferred
keeping closed and the girl had been stationed there as a human
declaration, "no thoroughfare."

Still he stood where he was and presently he had the result of his
waiting.

A deep, masculine voice, unmistakable in the peremptoriness of its
command, sounded from the massed tangle of the hillside. It expressed
itself in the single word "Begone!" and Henderson was not fool enough
to search the underbrush for an identifying glimpse of his challenger.

"My name is Jerry Henderson and I was seeking to be shown my way," he
said quietly, keeping his eyes, as he spoke, studiously on the face of
the girl.

"Begone! I'm a-warnin' ye fa'r. Begone!"

The wayfarer shrugged his shoulders.