ever prove inadequate.

"No," she answered gently, "I shall never get too good for you, Joe--for
any of my friends."

He looked, almost with aversion, at the book she held so closely. He
distrusted books. Instinctively he felt them to be enemies.

"If you get them there ideas about learnin', an' all that, you will!" he
gruffly said. "Leastways you'll be goin' off, some day an' leavin'
us--me, the mountings an'--an' all yer friends up here."

An expression of great earnestness, of almost fierce intensity grew in
his face. "Madge," he said, "Madge Brierly, you're makin' a mistake!
You're plannin' things to take you off from here; you're plannin' things
to make you suffer, later on. You're gettin' bluegrass notions, an'
bluegrass notions never did no mounting-born no good." He stepped closer
to her.

The latent fires in his approaching eyes were warning for her and she
stepped back hastily. "Joe Lorey, you behave yourself!" said she. "I--"

"Can't ye see I love ye, Madge?" he asked, and then the fires died down,
leaving in his eyes the pleading, worried look alone. "Why, Madge, I--"

She tried to make a joke of it. "Joe Lorey," she said, laughing, "I
reckon you're _plum_ crazy. An' you ain't givin' me a chance to do what
'twas that I come down for."

"But--"

"I ain't goin' to listen to another word, to-day," said she, and waved
him off.

He went obediently, but slowly and unhappily, his rifle snuggling in
the crook of his left elbow, his heavy boots finding firm footing in the
rough and rocky trail as if by instinct of their own, without assistance
from his brain. A "revenuer," coming up, just then, to bother him about
his still and its unlawful product of raw whisky, would have met small
mercy at his hands. He would have been a bad man, then, to quarrel with.
His temper would have flared at slightest provocation. He would not let
it flare at her; but, unseeing any of the beauties which so vividly
appealed to her, the bitter foretaste of defeat was in his heart; and in
his soul was fierce revolt and disappointment. He had not the slightest
thought, however, of accepting this defeat as final.

Madge watched him go with a look of keen distress upon her fresh and
beautiful young face. She must not let him say what he had almost said,
for she shrank from the thought of wounding him with the answer she felt
in her heart that she would have to make. He had slouched off, half-way
down the trail and out of sight, bef