could
kill her fur a-demeanin' of herself so--she led that thar horse, him
a-ridin' an' a-leanin' on the neck o' the beastis, two mile up the
mountain, through the night."

"Waal, let her bide thar. I'll look on her face no mo'," declared the
old man, his toothless jaw shaking. "Kittredge she be now, an' none o'
the name kin come a-nigh me. How be I ever a-goin' 'bout 'mongst the
folks at the settlement agin with my darter married ter a Kittredge? How
Josiah an' his dad mus' be a-grinnin' in thar graves at me this night!
An' I 'low they hev got suthin' ter grin about."

And suddenly his grim face relaxed, and once more he began to smite his
hands together and to call aloud for Evelina.

Timothy could offer no consolation, but stared dismally into the fire,
and Stephen rose with a sigh and addressed himself to pushing the
spinning-wheels and tubs and tables into the opposite corner of the
room, in the hope of solving the enigma of its wonted order.

*****

It seemed to Evelina afterward that when she climbed the rugged ways
of the mountain slope in that momentous night she left forever in the
depths of the Cove that free and careless young identity which she had
been. She did not accurately discriminate the moment in which she began
to realize that she was among her hereditary enemies, encompassed by
a hatred nourished to full proportions and to a savage strength long
before she drew her first breath. The fact only gradually claimed its
share in her consciousness as the tension of anxiety for Absalom's sake
relaxed, for the young mountaineer's strength and vitality were promptly
reasserted, and he rallied from the wound and his pallid and forlorn
estate with the recuperative power of the primitive man. By degrees she
came to expect the covert unfriendly glances his brother cast upon her,
the lowering averted mien of her sister-in-law, and now and again she
surprised a long, lingering, curious gaze in his mother's eyes. They
were all Kittredges! And she wondered how she could ever have dreamed
that she might live happily among them--one of them, for her name was
theirs. And then perhaps the young husband would stroll languidly in,
with his long hair curling on his blue jeans coat-collar, and an assured
smile in his dark brown eyes, and some lazy jest on his lips, certain of
a welcoming laugh, for he had been so near to death that they all had a
sense of acquisition in that he had been led back. For his sake they had