ie Sue had her tea?"

"It certainly is, Miss Shirley!" said Rickey, with penitent emphasis. "I
clean forgot it, and she'll row me up the gump-stump! Come on, Greenie,"
and she started off through the bushes.

But the other hung back. "Ah done tole yo' Ah ain' gwine be dat
Valiant," she said stubbornly.

"Look here, Greenville Female Seminary Simms," Rickey retorted, "don't
you multiply words with me just because your mammy was working there
when you were born and gave you a fancy name! If you'll promise to be
him, I'll get Miss Mattie Sue to let us make molasses candy."

CHAPTER XIX

UNDER THE HEMLOCKS

Shirley looked at Valiant with a deepening of her dimple. "Rickey isn't
an aristocrat," she said: "she's what we call here poor-white, but she's
got a heart of gold. She's an orphan, and the neighborhood in general,
and Miss Mattie Sue Mabry in particular, have adopted her."

He hardly heard her words for the painful wonder that was holding him.
He had canvassed many theories to explain his father's letter but such a
thing as a duel he had never remotely imagined. His father had taken a
man's life. Was it this thought--whatever the provocation, however
justified by the customs of the time and section--that had driven him to
self-exile? He recalled himself with an effort, for she was speaking
again.

"You've found Lovers' Leap, no doubt?"

"No. This is the first time I've been so far from the house. Is it near
here?"

"I'll show it to you." She held out her hand for the bunch of jessamine
and laid it on the broad roots of a tree that were mottled with lichen.
"Look there," she said suddenly; "isn't that a beauty?"

She was pointing to a jimson-weed on which had settled, with glassy
wings vibrating, a long, ungainly, needle-like insect with an odd
sword-like beak. "What is that?" he asked.

"A snake-doctor. If Unc' Jefferson were here he'd say, 'Bettah watch
out! Dah's er snek roun' erbout heah, sho'!' He'll fill you full of
darky superstitions."

He shrugged his shoulders. "I'm being introduced to them hourly. I've
met the graveyard rabbit--one of them had hoodooed my motor yesterday.
I'm to carry a buckeye in my pocket--by the way, is a buckeye a
horse-chestnut?--if I want to escape rheumatism. I've learned that it's
bad luck to make a bargain on a Friday, and the weepy consequences of
singing before breakfast." A blue-jay darted by them, to perch on a limb
and eye them saucily. "And the jay-bird