passed two boys. Hale was wearing riding-boots and tight
breeches, and one of the boys ran his eyes up boot and leg and if they
were lifted higher, Hale could not tell.

"Whar'd you git him?" he squeaked.

The girl turned her head as the mule broke into a trot.

"Ain't got time to tell. They are my cousins," explained the girl.

"What is your name?" asked Hale.

"Loretty Tolliver." Hale turned in his saddle.

"Are you the daughter of Dave Tolliver?"

"Yes."

"Then you've got a brother named Dave?"

"Yes." This, then, was the sister of the black-haired boy he had seen in
the Lonesome Cove.

"Haven't you got some kinfolks over the mountain?"

"Yes, I got an uncle livin' over thar. Devil Judd, folks calls him,"
said the girl simply. This girl was cousin to little June in Lonesome
Cove. Every now and then she would look behind them, and when Hale
turned again inquiringly she explained:

"I'm worried about my cousins back thar. I'm afeered somethin' mought
happen to 'em."

"Shall we wait for them?"

"Oh, no--I reckon not."

Soon they overtook two men on horseback, and after they passed and were
fifty yards ahead of them, one of the men lifted his voice jestingly:

"Is that your woman, stranger, or have you just borrowed her?" Hale
shouted back:

"No, I'm sorry to say, I've just borrowed her," and he turned to see how
she would take this answering pleasantry. She was looking down shyly and
she did not seem much pleased.

"They are kinfolks o' mine, too," she said, and whether it was in
explanation or as a rebuke, Hale could not determine.

"You must be kin to everybody around here?"

"Most everybody," she said simply.

By and by they came to a creek.

"I have to turn up here," said Hale.

"So do I," she said, smiling now directly at him.

"Good!" he said, and they went on--Hale asking more questions. She was
going to school at the county seat the coming winter and she was fifteen
years old.

"That's right. The trouble in the mountains is that you girls marry so
early that you don't have time to get an education." She wasn't going
to marry early, she said, but Hale learned now that she had a sweetheart
who had been in town that day and apparently the two had had a quarrel.
Who it was, she would not tell, and Hale would have been amazed had he
known the sweetheart was none other than young Buck Falin and that the
quarrel between the lovers had sprung from the opening quarrel that day
between th