from his pocket. Had he not had more than enough to drink that
day, he might have possessed the prudence to put this back untouched.
Instead, he drained it; then carelessly sent it flying across the fence
into an adjoining field rank with old weeds.

He came on after this, and Nancy sprang up, holding lightly to one of
the low hanging boughs. Before they spoke, and to her wild dismay, he
kissed her; and, as much to her dismay, she yielded, clinging to him in
a strange, sweet agony. For if two hearts are hungry, if two natures
have been strangled, there is a time when the touch of lips to lips lets
loose a sweep of human passion before which the hosts of heaven and the
laws of man draw back in awe.

But suddenly, with a piercing shriek, she sprang away; then, clutching
his arm, whirled him about.

"Look!" she whispered, pointing a trembling finger to a pale, mysterious
glow which seemed to be arising from the peaks of the distant
Cumberlands.

"The moon is coming up," he said, unsteadily.

This was the first time either had spoken, either had moved; but now she
commenced to sob in little gasps, backing farther from him as though he
were something she dared not touch again--reaching blindly behind her
for their old tree, whose strength in having resisted the fury of many
storms might be imparted to her now.

"What's the matter?" he asked, still stupidly.

"Oh, Brent," she whispered, "I thought it was that blind girl lookin'
down here an' tellin' me she'd rather see me dead! Go home, quick, for
the love of Christ!"

He would not ask her to explain. Non-understandable as her words had
been, they had given him time to look about and see upon what a perilous
brink their feet were standing.

Brent was not a godly man; he had not cultivated Nancy with a grain of
godly intention. But he was a manly man; and now as he suddenly
realized, with that certainty which has no law, no rule, no answer, that
she was good, he would not trust himself to speak. Shutting his teeth
hard, he turned abruptly and almost ran toward the horse.

Then it was that she threw herself upon the grass and sobbed great sobs
of thankfulness; and tried to laugh, and tried to pray; holding out her
clasped hands to that halo of light above a humble cabin somewhere in
the mountains, in whose door a blind face had seemed to look down at her
entreating: "I'd ruther see ye die!"

It was in a perturbed but thoroughly sober mind that Brent dragged back
t