own herse'f, ef the
soldiers didn't ketch ye. I hain't seed her sence she got sick; 'pears
like ever'body's sick. Mebbe she's a leetle settled down now--no tellin'.
No use foolin' with her, Rome. You git away from hyeh. Don't you worry
'bout Isom--I'll take keer o' him, 'n' when he gits well, he'll want to
come atter ye, 'n' I'll let him go. He couldn't live hyeh without you.
But y'u must git away, Rome, 'n' git away mighty quick."

With hands clasped behind him, Rome stood and watched the bent figure
slowly pick its way around the stony cliff.

"I reckon I've got to go. She's ag'in' me; they're all ag'in' me. I
reckon I've jes got to go. Somehow, I've been kinder hopin'--" He closed
his lips to check the groan that rose to them, and turned again into the
gloom behind him.

XIV

JUNE came. The wild rose swayed above its image along every little
shadowed stream, and the scent of wild grapes was sweet in the air and
as vagrant as a bluebird's note in autumn. The rhododendrons burst into
beauty, making gray ridge and gray cliff blossom with purple, hedging
streams with snowy clusters and shining leaves, and lighting up
dark coverts in the woods as with white stars. The leaves were full,
woodthrushes sang, and bees droned like unseen running water in the
woods.

With June came circuit court once more-and the soldiers. Faint music
pierced the dreamy chant of the river one morning as Rome lay on a
bowlder in the summer sun; and he watched the guns flashing like another
stream along the water, and then looked again to the Lewallen cabin.
Never, morning, noon, or night, when he came from the rhododendrons, or
when they closed about him, did he fail to turn his eyes that way. Often
he would see a bright speck moving about the dim lines of the cabin,
and he would scarcely breathe while he watched it, so easily would it
disappear. Always he had thought it was Martha, and now he knew it was,
for the old miller had told him more of the girl, and had wrung his
heart with pity. She had been ill a long while. The "furriners" had
seized old Jasper's cabin and land. The girl was homeless, and she did
not know it, for no one had the heart to tell her. She was living
with the Braytons; and every day she went to the cabin, "moonin'n'
sorrowin' aroun'," as old Gabe said; and she was much changed.

Once more the miller came-for the last time, he said, firmly. Crump had
trailed him, and had learned where Rome was. The search would