th were clenched hard and she said no word. He
shook her again viciously, the blood pouring into his scarred face. "Ye
snivelin' brat, ye!" he snarled. "I'll show yer!" He began to drag her
after him through the bushes. A few yards and they were on the brink of
the headlong ugly chasm of Lovers' Leap. She cast one desperate look
about her and shut her eyes. Catching her about the waist he leaned over
and held her out in mid-air, as if she had been a kitten. "Ye ain't seen
me, hev yer? Promise, or over ye go. Ye won't look so pretty when yere
layin' down there on them rocks!"

The child's face was paper-white and she had begun to tremble like a
leaf, but her eyes remained closed.

"One--two--" he counted deliberately.

Her eyes opened. She turned one shuddering glance below, then
her resolution broke. She clutched his arm and broke into wild
supplications. "I promise, I promise!" she cried. "Oh, don't let go!
I promise!"

He set her on the solid ground and released her, looking at her
with a sneering laugh. "Now we'll see ef ye belong here or up ter
Hell's-Half-Acre," he said. "Fine folks keeps their promises, I've
heerd tell."

Rickey looked at him a moment shaking; then she burst into a passion
of sobs and with her face averted ran from him like a deer through the
bushes.

CHAPTER XLII

IN THE RAIN

Shirley stood looking out at the rain. It was falling in no steady
downpour which held forth promise of ending, but with a gentle constancy
that gave the hills a look of sodden discomfort and made disconsolate
miry pools by the roadside. The clouds were not too thick, however, to
let through a dismal gray brightness that shone on the foliage and
touched with glistening lines of high-light the draggled tufts of the
soaked bluegrass. Now and then, across the dripping fields, fraying
skeins of mist wandered, to lie curdled in the flooded hollows where,
here and there, cattle stood lowing at intervals in a mournful key.

The indoors had become impossible to her. She was sick of trying to
read, sick of the endless pacings and purposeless invention of needless
tasks. She wanted movement, the cobwebby mist about her knees, the wet
rain in her face. She ran up-stairs and came down clad in a close
scarlet jersey, with leather gaiters and a soft hat.

Emmaline saw her thus accoutered with disapproval. "Lawdy-mercy,
chile!" she urged; "you ain't goin' out? It's rainin' cats en dawgs!"

"I'm neither sugar nor sal