sat staring dully into the
blackened fireplace. To the lips of the departing lover rose a
question, inspired by that note of admiration which had lent a thrill
to her voice at mention of Jerry Henderson, but he sternly repressed
it.

To catechize her love would be disloyal and ungenerous. It would be a
wrong alike to her whom he trusted and to the man who was his loyal
friend--and hers. But in his heart, already sore with the prospect of
exile, with the thought of that dejectedly rocking figure inside and
the other figure he had left in the neutral grayness of the jail cell,
awakened a new ache. He was thinking how untutored and raw he must seem
now that his life had been thrown into the parallel of contrast with
the man who knew the broad world of "down below" and even of over-seas.
If to Blossom's thinking he himself had shrunken in stature, it was not
a surprising thing--but that did not rob the realization of its cutting
edge or its barb.

"Blossom," he said, as his face once more became ineffably gentle,
"thar's ther evenin' star comin' up over ther Wilderness Ridges." He
took both her hands in his and looked not at the evening star but into
the eyes that she lifted to gaze at it. "So long es I'm away--so long
es I lives--I won't never see hit withouten I thinks of _you_. But hit
hain't only when I see _hit_ thet I thinks of ye--hit's _always_. I
reckon ye don't sca'cely realize even a leetle portion of how much I
loves ye." He fell for a space silent, his glance caressing her, then
added unsteadily and with an effort to smile, "I reckon thet's jest got
ter be a secret a-tween ther Almighty, Who knows everything--an' me
thet don't know much else but jest _thet_!"

She pressed his hands, but she did not put her arms about him nor offer
to kiss him, and he reflected rather wretchedly that she had done that
only once. Though it might be ungenerous to think of it, save as a
coincidence, that one time had been before Jerry Henderson had been on
the scene for twenty-four hours.

Bear Cat Stacy, with the lemon afterglow at his back and only the
darkness before his face, was carrying a burdened spirit over into old
Virginia, where for the first time in his life he must, like some
red-handed murderer, "hide out" from the law.

Kinnard Towers felt that his plans had worked with a well-oiled
precision until the day after Lone Stacy's arrest, when he awoke to
receive the unwelcome tidings that Jerry Henderson had taken