e old man grinned
at the quick, unerring responses of the little girl, and the engineer
looked surprised. She read, too, with unusual facility, and her
pronunciation was very precise and not at all like her speech.

"You ought to send her to the same place," he said, but the old fellow
shook his head.

"I couldn't git along without her."

The little girl's eyes began to dance suddenly, and, without opening
"Mother Goose," she began:

"Jack and Jill went up a hill," and then she broke into a laugh and Hale
laughed with her.

Abruptly, the boy opposite rose to his great length.

"I reckon I better be goin'." That was all he said as he caught up a
Winchester, which stood unseen by his side, and out he stalked. There
was not a word of good-by, not a glance at anybody. A few minutes later
Hale heard the creak of a barn door on wooden hinges, a cursing command
to a horse, and four feet going in a gallop down the path, and he knew
there went an enemy.

"That's a good-looking boy--who is he?"

The old man spat into the fire. It seemed that he was not going to
answer and the little girl broke in:

"Hit's my cousin Dave--he lives over on the Nawth Fork."

That was the seat of the Tolliver-Falin feud. Of that feud, too, Hale
had heard, and so no more along that line of inquiry. He, too, soon rose
to go.

"Why, ain't ye goin' to have something to eat?"

"Oh, no, I've got something in my saddlebags and I must be getting back
to the Gap."

"Well, I reckon you ain't. You're jes' goin' to take a snack right
here." Hale hesitated, but the little girl was looking at him with such
unconscious eagerness in her dark eyes that he sat down again.

"All right, I will, thank you." At once she ran to the kitchen and the
old man rose and pulled a bottle of white liquid from under the quilts.

"I reckon I can trust ye," he said. The liquor burned Hale like fire,
and the old man, with a laugh at the face the stranger made, tossed off
a tumblerful.

"Gracious!" said Hale, "can you do that often?"

"Afore breakfast, dinner and supper," said the old man--"but I don't."
Hale felt a plucking at his sleeve. It was the boy with the dagger at
his elbow.

"Less see you laugh that-a-way agin," said Bub with such deadly
seriousness that Hale unconsciously broke into the same peal.

"Now," said Bub, unwinking, "I ain't afeard o' you no more."

V

Awaiting dinner, the mountaineer and the "furriner" sat on the porch
while Bub