y till he
growed ter be his own man."

She, too, grew pale. "Ye ain't meanin' ter let him take the boy sure
enough!" she gasped.

"I moughtn't be able ter holp it; I dun'no' how the law stands. He air
kin ter Lee-yander, an' mebbe hev got the bes' right ter him."

She shivered slightly; the dew was falling, and all the budding herbage
was glossed with a silver glister. The shadows were sparse. The white
branches of the aspens cast only the symmetrical outline of the tree
form on the illumined grass, and seemed scarcely less bare than in
winter, but on one swaying bough the mocking-bird sang all the joyous
prophecies of the spring to the great silver moon that made his gladsome
day so long.

She was quick to notice the sudden cessation of his song, the alert,
downward poise of his beautiful head, his tense critical attitude.
A mimicking whistle rose on the air, now soft, now keen, with swift
changes and intricate successions of tones, ending in a brilliant
borrowed roulade, delivered with a wonderful velocity and _elan_. The
long tail feathers, all standing stiffly upward, once more drooped; the
mocking-bird turned his head from side to side, then lifting his full
throat he poured forth again his incomparable, superb, infinitely
versatile melody, fixing his glittering eye on the moon, and heeding the
futilely ambitious worldling no mote.

The mimicking sound heralded the approach of Leander. Laurelia's heart,
full of bitterness for his sake, throbbed tenderly for him. Ah, what
was to be his fate! What unkind lot did the future hold for him in the
clutches of a man like this! Suddenly she was pitying his mother--her
own children, how safe!

She winced to tell him what had happened, but she it was who, bracing
her nerves, made the disclosure, for Sudley remained silent, the end of
the ox-yoke in his trembling hands, his head bare to the moon and the
dew, his face grown lined and old.

Leander stood staring at her out of his moonlit blue eyes, his hat far
back on the brown curls she had so vaunted, damp and crisp and clinging,
the low limp collar of his unbleached shirt showing his round full
throat, one hand resting on the high curb of the well, the other holding
a great brown gourd full of the clear water which he had busied himself
in securing while she sought to prepare him to hear the worst. His lips,
like a bent bow as she thought, were red and still moist as he now and
then took the gourd from them, and held