She leaned against the timbers that supported the flume
across the gully, and fanned herself with her hat. The tumult of her
brain had not shaped itself into any plan. She only wished she had not
seen. It was such a dreadful thing to know, to tell. Insensibly she was
preparing herself to dissemble. She was cooling her cheeks, and getting
ready to saunter lazily toward the house and speak indifferently. She
did not realize that after that she could not tell. There would be an
instant in which to decide, and then a dreary stretch of dissimulation.

At this moment she heard the quick hoofbeats of a galloping horse on
the road that led down the mountain-side. He was going away! Then
certainly she must not speak. They would never find him, and she would
keep the secret forever. She listened until the hoof-beats died away.
The flush faded out of her poor little face, leaving it wan and
hopeless. After all, it was a dreary thing for him to ride away, and
leave her nothing but a dismal secret such as this. A shred of cloud
drifted across the sun, and the canon suddenly became a cold, cheerless
place. She stepped into the path, and came face to face with Lysander.

"Have yuh seen anything of yer paw, M'lissy? Why, what ails yuh, child?
Y'r as white as buttermilk. Has anything bit yuh?"

"No," faltered the girl, looking down at her wretched finery; "my shoes
'a' been a-hurtin' my feet. I'm goin' back to the house to take 'em off.
I'm tired."

"I wish y'd set right down here and take off y'r shoes, M'lissy," said
her brother-in-law anxiously. "We'll have to kind o' watch yer paw. I
had to tell 'im about the spring, an' he struck off right away an' said
he was goin' up there. I reckoned he'd go away an' furgit it, but he
hain't come back yit. I'm afraid he'll git to talkin' when he comes back
to the house, and tell yer maw. It won't do no good, an' there ain't no
use in her workin' herself up red-headed about it,--'t enny rate not
till Poindexter comes back. We must git hold o' yer paw before he gits
to see her, and brace 'im up ag'in. If you'll set here an' call to me if
you see 'im below, I'll go on up an' look fer 'im."

Melissa had stood quite still, looking down at the uncompromising lines
of her drapery. It was rapidly becoming a pink blur to her gaze. The
ghastliness of what she had undertaken to conceal came over her like a
chill, insweeping fog. She shivered as she spoke, trying in vain to
return Lysander's honest gaze