cronies nodded assent.

As he pressed onward, the adventurer quickly regained his poise. The
novelty of the situation thrilled him agreeably. His thoughts were
crowded with imaginings of the strange things to come. Ambitious
vision of himself successful among the city's throngs made his pulses
beat faster. He felt that he had within him the power to achieve
something worth while in the world. Certainly, he would not fail for
lack of striving. But no triumph elsewhere could ever wean him from
his love for the Blue Ridge--for his home country. Yes, it was as he
had said there in the store: He would come back. He would come back to
the cabin in the "cove" under the shadows of Stone Mountain--back to
the old mother, back to Plutina. A warmth of exquisite tenderness
vibrated through him, as his hope leaped to that homecoming, to the
time when once again the girl should rest clinging on his bosom. And a
great peace lay under all his joy of anticipation. His love knew no
doubt. She had given her heart to him. Through his every wandering,
whatever might betide, her love would be with him, to comfort him in
sorrow, to crown him in happiness. A bird's song recalled the lilt of
her laughter. He saw again the tremulous curving of her mouth, red
against the fine warm pallor of her face at parting. Passion welled in
him. He halted yet once again, and stood with face suffused, gazing
back. It was as if he were swayed by a sudden secret sense that
warned him of her misery in this hour of his exaltation--her misery
where she lay prone under the tangle of laurel by Garden Creek,
sobbing out that anguish which is the penalty woman must pay for
love.

Zeke's eyes fastened anew on the rounded bulk of Stone Mountain's
cliffs. The immutability of them, and the majesty, relieved the
tenseness of his mood. He resumed his way serenely.... But Plutina
wept on, unassuaged.

When he drew near to North Wilkesboro', where he proposed to make a
first essay in railway journeying, Zeke seated himself under the shade
of a grove of persimmon-trees by the wayside, there painfully to
encumber his feet with the new shoes. As he laced these, he indulged
in soliloquy, after a fashion bred of his lonely life, on a subject
born of his immediate surroundings.

"I hain't noways superstitious," he mused complacently, "but this
grove ain't no nice place, bein' as it must be a nigger cemetery.
Uncle Dick Siddon says they's always niggers buried whar they's
pers