ple-butter between 'em," he added,
rolling his tongue, and a minute later, "Ma'd whip me jest the same,
an' I'd ruther be whipped for a whole day than for a half. Besides," he
burst out as though the mental image convulsed him with delight, "if I
went home I'd have to help her tote the water for the washin'."

"But what are you going to do with yourself?"

"I'm goin' huntin' with a gravel shooter, an' I'm goin' fishin' with a
willow pole, an' I'm goin' to find all the old hare traps, an' I'm goin'
to see 'em make hog's meat over at Bryarly's an' I'm goin' to the cider
pressin' down here at Cobblestone's. She ain't goin' to ketch me till
I've had my day!" he concluded with a whoop of ecstasy. Startled by the
sound, a rabbit sprang from a clump of sassafras, and the boy was over
the fence, on a rush of happy bare feet, in pursuit of it.

The road curved abruptly into a short wood, filled with dwarfed holly
trees, which were sown thickly with a shower of scarlet berries--and
while Abel walked through it, his visions thronged beside him like the
painted and artificial troupe of a carnival. He saw Molly coming to him,
separating him from Judy, surrendering her warm flesh and blood to his
arms. "I won't go back!" he said, still defiantly, "I'll love Molly if
I pay for it to the last day I live." With a terrible exultation he felt
that he was willing to pay for it--to pay any price, even the price of
his honour. His passion rushed like flame through his blood, scorching,
blackening, devouring.

Beyond the wood, the winding ash-coloured road dipped into a hollow, and
when he reached the brow of the low hill ahead, a west wind, which had
risen suddenly from the river, caught up with his footsteps and raced on
like a wild thing at his side. He could hear it sighing plaintively in
the bared trees he had left, or driving the hurtled leaves like a flock
of frightened partridges over the sumach and sassafras, and then lashing
itself into a frenzy as it chased over a level of broomsedge. Always
it sang of freedom--of the savage desire and thirst for freedom--of the
ineffable, the supreme ecstasy of freedom! And always while he listened
to it, while he felt the dead leaves stinging his flesh, he told
himself passionately that he "would not go back--that he would not marry
to-morrow!"

For hours he stalked with the wind. Then, turning out of the road, he
flung himself down on the broomsedge and lay for other hours gazing over
the a