t mought be better fur ye," she replied indifferently.

His momentary independence left him suddenly.

"Narcissa," he said reproachfully, "ye didn't always talk this way ter
me."

"That ain't news ter me. Ben 'lows ez I talk six ways fur Sunday."

"Ye dunno how I feel, not knowin' how ye be set towards me, an'
hevin' ter see ye so seldom, a-workin' all the time down yander,
a-moonshinin'"--

"I wouldn't talk 'bout it so turr'ble loud." She glanced
apprehensively over her shoulder. "An' ye'd better quit it, ennyhows."

"Ye 'lows it be wrong," he said, his bold bright eyes all softened as
he looked at her, "bein' agin the law?"

"I ain't keerin' fur the law. Ef the truth war knowed, the law is
aimin' ter git all the benefit o' whiskey bein' drunk itself. That's
whar the law kems in. I only keer fur"--She stopped abruptly. She had
nearly revealed to him that she cared only lest some disaster come to
him in his risky occupation; that she would like him to be ploughing
in a safe level field at the side of a cabin, where she might sit by
the window and sew, and look out and see that no harm befell this big
bold man, six feet two inches high. "Con Hite!" she exclaimed, her
face scarlet, "I never see a body ez hard-hearted an' onmerciful ez
ye air. Whyn't ye water that sufferin' beast, ez air fairly honing
ter drink? Waal," she continued, after a pause in which he
demonstrated the axiom that one may lead a horse to water, but cannot
make him drink, "then whyn't ye go? I ain't got time ter waste, ef ye
hev."

She rose as if for departure, and he put his foot in the stirrup. "I
wish ye wouldn't be so harsh ter me, Narcissa," he said meekly.

"Waal, thar be a heap o' saaft-spoken gals ter be hed fur the askin'.
Ye kin take yer ch'ice."

And with this he was fain to be content, as he mounted and rode
reluctantly away.

She sat down again, and was still for a long time after the last echo
of his horse's hoofs had died on the air. Her thoughts did not follow
him, however. They turned again with renewed interest to the
fair-haired young stranger. Somehow she was ill at ease and vaguely
disillusioned. She watched mechanically, and with some unaccustomed
touch of melancholy, the burnished shimmering golden haze gradually
invest far blue domes and their purple slopes, and the brown valleys,
and the rugged rocky mountains nearer, with a certain idealized
slumberous effect like the landscape of a dream. In these still spaces