The cramp of
heart was eased and the groping voices of imagination seemed for the
time no longer tortured nightmares of complaint.

There was no one here to censor his fantasies and out of the gray eyes
went their veiling sullenness and out of the lips their taut grimness.
Into eyes and lips alike came something else--something touched with
the zealousness of aspiration.

"Hit's right over thar!" he murmured aloud but in a voice low pitched
and caressing of tone. "I've got ter get me money enough ter buy thet
farm offen Kinnard Towers."

He was looking down upon a point far below him where through a cleared
space flashed the shimmer of flowing water, and where in a small pocket
of acreage, the bottom ground rolled in gracious amenability to the
plow and harrow.

Again he nodded, and since he was quite alone he laughed aloud.

"She 'lows thet's ther place whar she wants ter live at," he added to
himself, "an' I aims ter satisfy her."

So after all some of his day-dreams were tangible!

He realized that he ought to be going on, yet he lingered and after a
few moments he spoke again, confiding his secrets to the open woods and
the arching skies--his only confidants.

"Blossom 'lowed yestiddy she was a-goin' over ter Aunt Jane Colby's
this mornin'. 'Pears like she ought ter be passin' back by hyar about
this time."

Cupping his hands at his lips, he sent out a long whoop, but before he
did that he took the precaution of concealing his sack of sprouted
grain under a ledge. Then he bent listening for an answer--but without
reward, and disappointment mantled in his gray eyes as he dropped to
the age-corroded rock and sat with his hands clasped about his updrawn
knees.

It was very still there, except for the industrious hammering of a
"peckerwood" on a decayed tree trunk, and the young mountaineer sat
almost as motionless as his pedestal.

Then without warning a lilting peal of laughter sounded at his back and
Turner came to his feet. As he wheeled he saw Blossom Fulkerson
standing there above him and her eyes were dancing with the mischievous
delight of having stalked him undiscovered.

"It's a right happy thing fer you, Turner Stacy, that I didn't aim ter
kill ye," she informed him with mock solemnity. "I've heered ye brag
thet no feller hereabouts could slip up on ye in the woods,
unbeknownst."

"I wasn't studyin' erbout nobody slippin' up on me. Blossom," he
answered calmly. "I hain't got no cause ter be