he rose after a while with the scowl clearing from
his face.

Into the field of his thoughts, like sunlight into a storm sky, came a
new image: the image of a girl in a red dress looking at him from an
attic window. The tight lips loosened, softened, and parted in a smile.

"Afore God," he declared in a low voice, "she war a comely gal!"

Kenneth Thornton--now self rechristened Cal Maggard, was up and his
coffee pot was steaming on the live coals long before the next morning's
sun had pierced its shafts into the gray opaqueness that cloaked the
valleys. He squatted on his heels before the fire, honing the ancient
blade of the scythe that he had found in the cock loft, and that blade
was swinging against the stubborn resistance of weed and briar-trailer
before the drench of the dew had begun to dry.

He did not stop often to rest, and before noon he straightened and stood
breathing deep but rhythmically to survey a levelled space where he had
encountered an impenetrable thicket.

Then Cal Maggard leaned his scythe and axe against a young hickory and
went over to the corner of the yard where a spring poured with a crystal
flow into a natural basin under the gnarled roots of a sycamore.
Kneeling there, stripped to the waist, he began laving his chest and
shoulders and dipping his face deep into the cold water.

So intent was he that he failed to hear the light thud of hoofs along
the sand-cushioned and half-obliterated road which skirted his
dilapidated fence line, and he straightened up at length to see a
horseman who had drawn rein there and who now sat sidewise gazing at him
with one leg thrown across his pommel.

The horseman, tall and knit for tremendous strength, was clad in jeans
overalls and a blue cotton shirt. His unshaven face was swarthy and high
of cheekbone and his black hat, though shapeless and weather-stained,
sat on his head with a jauntiness that seemed almost a challenge. Eyes,
both shrewd and determined, gave the impression of missing nothing, but
his voice was pleasant as he introduced himself.

"My name's Bas Rowlett, an' I reckon _you're_ Cal Maggard, hain't ye?
I've done heered ye 'lowed ter dwell amongst us."

Maggard nodded. "Come inside an' set ye a cheer," he invited, and the
horseman vaulted to the ground as lightly as though he carried no
weight, flinging his bridle rein over a picket of the fence.

For a short space when the host had donned his shirt and provided his
guest with a