r the
sin and the horror of it, after the passion and its anguish, came
tears. He wept and wiped his tears with her dress.

Then she told him how her mother had been hurt. How Hoyle had driven the
half-broken colt and the mule all the way to Carew's alone, to bring her
home, and how he had come nigh being killed. How a gentleman had helped
her when the colt tried to run and the mule was mean, and how she had
brought him home with her.

Then he lifted his head and looked at her, his haggard face drawn with
suffering, and the calmness of her eyes still further soothed and
comforted him. They were filled with big tears, and he knew the tears
were for him, for the change which had come upon him, lonely and
wretched, doomed to hide out on the mountain, his clothes torn by the
brambles and soiled by the red clay of the holes into which he had
crawled to hide himself. He rose and sat at her side and held her head
on his shoulder with gentle hand.

"Pore little sister--pore little Cass! I been awful mean an' bad," he
murmured. "Hit's a badness I cyan't 'count fer no ways. When I seed that
thar doctah man--I reckon hit war him I seed lyin' asleep up yander on
Hangin' Rock--a big tall man, right thin an' white in the face--" he
paused and swallowed as if loath to continue.

"Frale!" she cried, and would have drawn away but that he held her.

"I didn't hurt him, Cass. I mount hev. I lef' him lie thar an' never
woke him nor teched him, but--I felt hit here--the badness." He struck
his chest with his fist. "I lef' thar fast an' come here. Ever sence I
killed Ferd, hit's be'n follerin' me that-a-way. I reckon I'm cursed to
hell-fire fer hit now, ef they take me er ef they don't--hit's all one;
hit's thar whar I'm goin' at the las'."

"Frale, there is a way--"

"Yes, they is one way--only one. Ef you'll give me your promise, Cass,
I'll get away down these mountains, an' I'll work; I'll work hard an'
get you a house like one I seed to the settlement, Cass, I will. Hit's
you, Cass. Ever sence Ferd said that word, I be'n plumb out'n my hade.
Las' night I slep' in Wild Cat Hole, an' I war that hungered an' lone, I
tried to pray like your maw done teached me, an' I couldn' think of
nothin' to say, on'y just, 'Oh, Lord, Cass!' That-a-way--on'y your
name, Cass, Cass, all night long."

"I reckon Satan put my name in your heart, Frale; 'pears to me like it
is sin."

"Naw! Satan nevah put your name thar. He don't meddle with sech as