s the two
lawns to the great gray house on the opposite knoll.

For the first fortnight of his mother's convalescence Tom slept badly,
and his days were as the days of the accused whose sentence has been
suspended; jail days, these, with chains to clank when he thought of the
promise made in the gray Christmas dawn; with whips to flog him when the
respite grew shorter and the time drew near when his continued stay at
home must be explained to his mother.

Ardea had gone back to Carroll the Saturday before New Year's, and there
was no one to talk to. But for that matter, he had cut himself out of
her confidence by his assault on the Farleys. Every morning for a week
after the Christmas-day clash, Scipio came over with the compliments of
"Mawsteh Majah," Miss Euphrasia, and Miss Dabney, and kindly inquiries
touching the progress of the invalid. But after New Year's, Tom remarked
that there were only the Major and Miss Euphrasia to send compliments,
and despair set in. For out of his boyhood he had brought up
undiminished the longing for sympathy, or rather for a burden-bearer on
whom he might unload his troubles, and Ardea had begun to promise well.

It was on a crisp morning in the second week of January when the
prolonged agony of suspense drove him to the mountain. His mother was
sitting up, and was rapidly recovering her strength. His father had gone
back to his work in the iron plant, and his uncle was preparing to
return to his charge in South Tredegar. With Uncle Silas and the nurse
both gone, Tom knew that the evil hour must come speedily; and it was
with some half-cowardly hope that his uncle would break the ice for him
that he ran away on the crisp morning of happenings.

With no particular destination in view, it was only natural that his
feet should find the familiar path leading up to the great boulder under
the cedars. He had not visited the rock of the spring since the summer
day when he and Nan Bryerson had taken refuge from the shower in the
hollow heart of it, nor had he seen Nan since their parting at the door
of her father's cabin under the cliff. Rumor in Gordonia had it that
Tike Bryerson had been hunted out by the revenue officers; and, for
reasons which he would have found it difficult to declare in words, Tom
had been shy about making inquiries.

For this cause an apparition could scarcely have startled him more than
did the sight of Nan filling her bucket at the trickling barrel-spring
under