death in all
the terrible silence of death. And now a preacher with a long scar
across his forehead had come to the one little church in the place and
the fervor of religion was struggling with feudal hate for possession of
the town. To the girl, who saw a symbol in every mood of the earth, the
passions of these primitive people were like the treacherous streams of
the uplands--now quiet as sunny skies and now clashing together with but
little less fury and with much more noise. And the roar of the flood
above the wind that late afternoon was the wrath of the Father, that
with the peace of the Son so long on earth, such things still could be.
Once more trouble was threatening and that day even she knew that
trouble might come, but she rode without fear, for she went when and
where she pleased as any woman can, throughout the Cumberland, without
insult or harm.

At the end of the street were two houses that seemed to front each other
with unmistakable enmity. In them were two men who had wounded each
other only the day before, and who that day would lead the factions, if
the old feud broke loose again. One house was close to the frothing hem
of the flood--a log-hut with a shed of rough boards for a kitchen--the
home of Becky Day.

The other was across the way and was framed and smartly painted. On the
steps sat a woman with her head bare and her hands under her
apron--widow of the Marcum whose death from a bullet one month before
had broken the long truce of the feud. A groaning curse was growled from
the window as the girl drew near, and she knew it came from a wounded
Marcum who had lately come back from the West to avenge his brother's
death.

"Why don't you go over to see your neighbor?" The girl's clear eyes gave
no hint that she knew--as she well did--the trouble between the houses,
and the widow stared in sheer amazement, for mountaineers do not talk
with strangers of the quarrels between them.

"I have nothin' to do with such as her," she said, sullenly; "she ain't
the kind--"

"Don't!" said the girl, with a flush, "she's dying."

"_Dyin?_"

"Yes." With the word the girl sprang from the mule and threw the reins
over the pale of the fence in front of the log-hut across the way. In
the doorway she turned as though she would speak to the woman on the
steps again, but a tall man with a black beard appeared in the low door
of the kitchen-shed.

"How is your--how is Mrs. Day?"

"Mighty puny this mornin'--