o
see her face. Yet upon him had descended an unaccustomed embarrassment
which found no easy door opening upon conversation.

So they sat in a diffident silence that stretched itself to greater
awkwardness, until at last Dorothy rose abruptly to her feet and
Thornton feared that she meant to take flight.

"'Pears like ter me," she asserted, suddenly, "hit's nigh suffocatin'
hot in hyar."

"I war jest a-studyin' erbout thet myself," affirmed Maggard whose
quickness of uptake was more eager than truthful. "Ther moon's a-shinin'
outdoors. Let's go out thar an' breathe free."

As though breathing free were the most immediate of her needs, the girl
rose and stood for a moment with the firelight catching the pink of her
cheeks and bronzing her heavy hair, then she turned and led the way out
to the porch where, in the moisture of the fresh-washed air, the
honeysuckle vines were heavy with fragrance.

The walnut tree, no longer lashed into storm incantations, stood now in
quiet majesty, solitary though, at a respectful distance, surrounded.
The frogs and whippoorwills were voiceful, and from the silvery
foreground, shadow-blotted with cobalt, to the indigo-deep walls of the
ranges, the earth spilled over influences of sentient youth.

Maggard gazed down at the girl and the girl, with a hand resting on a
porch post, stood looking off out of eyes that caught and gave back the
soft light from the moon. To Maggard she seemed unconditionally lovely,
but the fetters of shyness still held them both.

"I don't know many folks hyarabouts yit," he said with impetuous
suddenness. "I'd plumb love ter hev ye befriend me."

Dorothy turned toward him and her lips relaxed their shyness into a
friendly smile--then impulsively she demanded: "Did yore foreparents
dwell hyarabouts a long time back?"

Thornton's face, with the moonlight upon it, stiffened into a mask-like
reticence at this touching upon the sensitive topic which threatened his
identification as a hunted man.

"I've done heered thet they lived somewhars in Kaintuck ginerations
afore my time," he made evasive answer. "What made ye ask me that
question?"

Then it was she who became hesitant but after a little she suggested,
"Come on down hyar under thet old walnuck tree. Seems like I kin talk
freer thar."

Together they went to the place where the shadows lay deep, like an
island in a lake of moonshine, and the girl talked on in the hurried,
shy fashion of one with a n