head of me."

But abruptly that cool and disconcerting vein of ironic calm left him
and he bent his head with the sullen and smouldering eyes of a vicious
bull.

"But be thet es hit may. I claims thet ye kain't stand out erginst my
sweetheartin' ef ye trusts yoreself ter see me. _You_ claims
contrariwise, but ye don't dast test yore theory. I loves ye an' wants
ye enough ter go on eatin' insults fer a spell.... Mebby ther Widder
Thornton'll listen ter reason--when ther jury an' ther hangman gits
done."

The girl made no answer. She could not speak because of the fury that
choked her, but she turned on her heel and he made no effort to follow
her.

The steeply humped mountains on either side seemed to Dorothy Thornton
to close in and stifle her, and the bracing, effervescent air of the
high places had become dead and lifeless in her nostrils, as to one who
smothers.

That evening, when Sim Squires came in to supper, he made casual
announcement that he understood Bas had gone away somewhere. His vapid
grin turned to a sneer as he mentioned Rowlett's name after the
never-failing habit of his dissembling, but Dorothy set down his plate
as though it had become suddenly too hot to hold.

"Whar did he go?" she demanded with a gasp in her voice, and the hired
man, drawing his platter over, drawled out his answer in a tone of
commonplace:

"Nobody didn't seem ter know much erbout hit. Some 'lowed he'd fared
over ter Virginny ter seek ter aid Parish in his trial." He paused, then
with well-feigned maliciousness he added, "but ef I war inter any
trouble myself, I'd thank Bas Rowlett ter keep his long fingers outen my
affairs."

Gone to help Parish! Dorothy drew back and leaned against the wall with
knees grown suddenly weak. She thought she knew what that gratuitous aid
meant!

Parish fighting for his life over there in the adjoining state faced
enemies enough at his front without having assassins lurking in the
shadows at his back!

Perhaps Bas had not actually gone yet. Perhaps he could be stopped.
Perhaps her rebuff that morning had goaded him to his decision. If he
had not gone he must not go! The one thought that seemed the crux of her
vital problem was that so long as he remained here he could not be
there.

And if he had not actually set out she could hold him here! His amazing
egotism was his one vulnerable point, the single blind spot on his
crafty powers of reasoning--and that egotism would sway and bend