ll, and Rome had told him to ride the horse. But
the lad had gone on afoot to his duties at old Gabe Bunch's mill, and
Rome himself rode down Thunderstruck Knob through the mist and dew of
the early morning. The sun was coming up over Virginia, and through a
dip in Black Mountain the foot-hills beyond washed in blue waves against
its white disk. A little way down the mountain, the rays shot through
the gap upon him, and, lancing the mist into tatters, and lighting the
dew-drops, set the birds singing. Rome rode, heedless of it all,
under primeval oak and poplar, and along rain-clear brooks and happy
waterfalls, shut in by laurel and rhododendron, and singing past mossy
stones and lacelike ferns that brushed his stirrup. On the brow of every
cliff he would stop to look over the trees and the river to the other
shore, where the gray line of a path ran aslant Wolf's Head, and was
lost in woods above and below.

At the river he rode up-stream, looking still across it. Old Gabe Bunch
halloed to him from the doorway of the mill, as he splashed through the
creek, and Isom's thin face peered through a breach in the logs. At the
ford beyond, he checked his horse with a short oath of pleased surprise.
Across the water, a scarlet dress was moving slowly past a brown field
of corn. The figure was bonneted, but he knew the girl's walk and the
poise of her head that far away. Just who she was, however, he did
not know, and he sat irresolute. He had seen her first a month since,
paddling along the other shore, erect, and with bonnet off and hair
down; she had taken the Lewallen path up the mountain. Afterward, he saw
her going at a gallop on young Jasper's gray horse, bareheaded again,
and with her hair loose to the wind, and he knew she was one of his
enemies. He thought her the girl people said young Jasper was going
to marry, and he had watched her the more closely. From the canoe she
seemed never to notice him; but he guessed, from the quickened sweep
of her paddle, that she knew he was looking at her, and once, when he
halted on his way home up the mountain, she half turned in her saddle
and looked across at him. This happened again, and then she waved her
bonnet at him. It was bad enough, any Stetson seeking any Lewallen for a
wife, and for him to court young Jasper's sweetheart-it was a thought to
laugh at. But the mischief was done. The gesture thrilled him, whether
it meant defiance or good-will, and the mere deviltry of such