her; and he
watched them until the child grew tired and turned his face to the fire
and lay still--looking into it. Buck could see his eyes close presently,
and then the puppy crept closer, put his head on his playmate's chest,
and the two lay thus asleep.

And still Buck looked--his clasp loosening on his pistol and his lips
loosening under his stiff mustache--and kept looking until the door
opened again and the woman crossed the floor. A flood of light flashed
suddenly on the snow, barely touching the snow-hung tips of the
apple-tree, and he saw her in the doorway--saw her look anxiously into
the darkness--look and listen a long while.

Buck dropped noiselessly to the snow when she closed the door. He
wondered what they would think when they saw his tracks in the snow next
morning; and then he realized that they would be covered before morning.

As he started up the ravine where his horse was he heard the clink of
metal down the road and the splash of a horse's hoofs in the soft mud,
and he sank down behind a holly-bush.

Again the light from the cabin flashed out on the snow.

"That you, Jim?"

"Yep!"

And then the child's voice: "Has oo dot thum tandy?"

"Yep!"

The cheery answer rang out almost at Buck's ear, and Jim passed death
waiting for him behind the bush which his left foot brushed, shaking the
snow from the red berries down on the crouching figure beneath.

Once only, far down the dark jungled way, with the underlying streak of
yellow that was leading him whither, God only knew--once only Buck
looked back. There was the red light gleaming faintly through the
moonlit flakes of snow. Once more he thought of the Star, and once more
the chaplain's voice came back to him.

"Mine!" saith the Lord.

Just how, Buck could not see with himself in the snow and _him_ back
there for life with her and the child, but some strange impulse made him
bare his head.

"Yourn," said Buck grimly.

But nobody on Lonesome--not even Buck--knew that it was Christmas Eve.

THE ARMY OF THE CALLAHAN

I

The dreaded message had come. The lank messenger, who had brought it
from over Black Mountain, dropped into a chair by the stove and sank his
teeth into a great hunk of yellow cheese. "Flitter Bill" Richmond
waddled from behind his counter, and out on the little platform in front
of his cross-roads store. Out there was a group of earth-stained
countrymen, lounging against the rickety fence or swinging on it