at
thar old history book you used to make us learn! He air 'a petty
tyrant.' He air that, and Thunder Run don't like that kind. He air not
going to tyrannize much longer over Billy Maydew. And don't you be
comparing me to Steve Dagg. I ain't like that, and I never was."

He lay prone again, insulted, and would not go on with the lesson. Allan
took it calmly, made a placating remark or two, and lapsed into a
friendly silence. It was pleasant in the woods, where the birds flitted
to and fro, and the pink honeysuckle grew around, and from a safe
distance a chipmunk daintily watched the intruders. The scout lay,
drowsily happy, the sunshine making spun gold of his hair and beard, his
carbine resting near. Back on Thunder Run, at the moment, Christianna in
her pink sunbonnet, a pansy from the tollgate at her throat, rested upon
her hoe in the garden she was making and looked out over the great sea
of mountains visible from the Thunder Run eyrie. Shadows of clouds moved
over them; then the sun shone out and they lay beneath in an amethystine
dream; Christianna had had her dream the night before. In her sleep she
had come upon a dark pool beneath alders, and she had knelt upon the
black bank and plunged her arms to the shoulders into the water. It
seemed in her dream that there was something at the bottom that she
wanted--a breastpin or a piece of money. And she had drawn up something
that weighed heavily and filled her arms. When she had lifted it halfway
out of the water the moon came out, and it was Allan Gold. She stood now
in her steep mountain garden bordered with phlox and larkspur and looked
far out over the long and many ridges. She knew in which general
direction to look, and with her mind's eye she tried to see the fighting
men, the fighting men; and then she shook her head and bent to her
hoeing--far back and high up on Thunder Run.

Thirty leagues away, in the flowering wood by the Mt. Solon road Allan
sat up. "I was nearly asleep," he said, "back on the mountain-side
above Thunder Run." He listened. "Horses' hoofs--a squad at a trot,
coming east! some of Ashby's of course, but you stay here and put earth
on the fire while I take a look." Rifle in hand, he threaded the thick
undergrowth between the camp and the road.

It was late in the afternoon, but the road lay yet in sunshine between
the clover and the wheat, the bloomy orchards and the woods of May.
Allan's precautions had been largely instinctive; there we