dull, her heart burned out, her hands gnarled with toil under
the slavedom of a beast. Yet even Peter, quiet as a mouse where he lay,
sensed the difference between them. He had seen the girl and this woman
sobbing in each other's arms. And often he had crawled to the woman's
feet, and occasionally her hand had touched him, and frequently she had
given him things to eat. But it was seldom he heard her voice when the
man was near.

The man was biting off a chunk of black tobacco. Suddenly he asked,

"How old is she, Liz?"

And the woman answered in a strange and husky voice.

"Seventeen the twelfth day of this month."

The man spat.

"Mooney ought to pay a thousand. We've had her better'n ten years--an'
Mooney's crazy as a loon to git her. He'll pay!"

"Jed--" The woman's voice rose above its hoarseness. "Jed--it ain't
right!"

The man laughed. He opened his mouth wide, until his yellow fangs
gleamed in the sun, and the girl with the axe paused for a moment in her
work, and flung back her head, staring at the two before the cabin door.

"Right?" jeered the man. "Right? That's what you been preachin' me these
last ten years 'bout whiskey-runnin,' but it ain't made me stop sellin'
whiskey, has it? An' I guess it ain't a word that'll come between Mooney
and me--not if Mooney gits his thousand." Suddenly he turned upon her,
a hand half raised to strike. "An' if you whisper a word to her--if y'
double-cross me so much as the length of your little finger--I'll break
every bone in your body, so help me God! You understand? You won't say
anything to her?"

The woman's uneven shoulders drooped lower.

"I won't say ennything, Jed. I--promise."

The man dropped his uplifted hand with a harsh grunt.

"I'll kill y' if you do," he warned.

The girl had dropped her axe, and was coming toward them. She was a
slim, bird-like creature, with a poise to her head and an up-tilt to her
chin which warned that the man had not yet beaten her to the level of
the woman. She was dressed in a faded calico, frayed at the bottom,
and with the sleeves bobbed off just above the elbows of her slim white
arms. Her stockings were mottled with patches and mends, and her shoes
were old, and worn out at the toes.

But to Peter, worshipping her from his hiding place, she was the most
beautiful thing in the world. Jolly Roger had said the same thing, and
most men--and women, too--would have agreed that this slip of a girl
possessed a beauty w