t she ran most of the twelve
intervening miles. Reaching at last the cabin clearing, she panted up
its steep side, through burnt stumps and sparsely growing corn, to the
door; but there across the sill her father lay face down and motionless.
He might have been drunk, and so at first she thought, until her
approach revealed a little hole in the back of his head. She stared at
him like an image of wood, then sank upon the floor, putting her lips
close to his ear.

"Pappy," she said, in a quick whisper, "Pappy, tell me who done hit! I
know ye air daid--but can't ye tell me jest that?"

Her first impulse was of revenge, but slowly the love--unmerited as it
may have been--and the sense of loss, of loneliness, came over her like
a great wave, and with her face on his still shoulder she wailed her
wretched grief to the silent wilderness. When she looked up it was
sundown. She realized that whoever had killed him might come back for
her--might now, indeed, be "layin' out" for her; and yet she could not
leave him unburied! Her hands grasped his shirt and she frantically
tugged, bracing her heels against the roughly hewn log door-step, in a
vague way hoping that she might drag him to a spot where the ground
would be soft enough to dig. A few minutes of this fruitless effort
compelled her to give it up.

"Pappy, can't ye help me, jest a leetle?" she had whispered in despair.
And then the tears would flow again.

She went stealthily to the edge of the corn patch and listened. A
lingering afterglow touched the broken rows of skyward-pointing tassels,
but the valley below her lay shrouded in gloom. Night was creeping up
the mountain side; she could see it, feel it in the horrible silence.
All alone in that stark vastness of crags, disregarding those who might
be "layin' out" for her, she put her hands to her mouth and called; then
leaned forward, holding her breath and listening. There was not even an
echo. So she turned wearily back to the cabin and tenderly covered that
which she was leaving with a quilt from her own bed, whispering:

"Gawd, nor nobody, don't seem ter heah me tonight--ye poh, ole Pappy!"

The only cabin where she might hope for help was three miles away; the
home of a partial friend--at least no enemy. Reaching it after a
perilous walk through a roadless, bridgeless wilderness, she stood
outside the crooked gate and called "Hallo." Again and again she called
till, in desperation scoffing at the risk--for it