leave Ananias and Myrtle here, and I could come back in the
summer for a little while, maybe."

She spoke with such eagerness, such appeal of loneliness, that he knew
it would break her heart ever to go at all. So there on the hilltop they
planned and agreed on the change from cattle to sheep, Lambert to have
half the increase, according to the custom, with herder's wages for two
years. She would have been more generous in the matter of pay, but that
was the basis upon which he had made his plans, and he would admit no
change.

Vesta was as enthusiastic over it as a child, all eagerness to begin,
seeing in the change a promise of the peace for which she had so
ardently longed. She appeared to have come suddenly from under a cloud
of oppression and to sparkle in the sun of this new hope. It was only
when they came to parting at the porch that the ghost of her old trouble
came to take its place at her side again.

"Has she cut the fence lately over there, Duke?" she asked.

"Not since I caught her at it. I don't think she'll do it again."

"Did she promise you she wouldn't cut it, Duke?"

She did not look at him as she spoke, but stood with her face averted,
as if she would avoid prying into his secret too directly. Her voice was
low, a note of weary sadness in it that seemed a confession of the
uselessness of turning her back upon the strife that she would forget.

"No, she didn't promise."

"If she doesn't cut the fence she'll plan to hurt me in some other way.
It isn't in her to be honest; she couldn't be honest if she tried."

"I don't like to condemn anybody without a trial, Vesta. Maybe she's
changed."

"You can't change a rattlesnake. You seem to forget that she's a Kerr."

"Even at that, she might be different from the rest."

"She never has been. You've had a taste of the Kerr methods, but you're
not satisfied yet that they're absolutely base and dishonorable in every
thought and deed. You'll find it out to your cost, Duke, if you let that
girl lead you. She's a will-o'-the-wisp sent to lure you from the
trail."

Lambert laughed a bit foolishly, as a man does when the intuition of a
woman uncovers the thing that he prided himself was so skilfully
concealed that mortal eyes could not find it. Vesta was reading through
him like a piece of greased parchment before a lamp.

"I guess it will all come out right," he said weakly.

"You'll meet Kerr one of these days with your old score between you,
an