till I lay out in
the lorrel fer him, he'll live a long time. Ef a Stetson ever done sech
meanness as that I never heerd it."

"Nother hev I," said the old man, with quick justice. "You air a
over-bearin' race, all o' ye, but I never knowed ye to be that mean.
Hit's all the wus fer ye thet ye air in sech doin's. I tell ye, Rome--"

A faint cry rose above the drone of the millstones, and old Gabe stopped
with open lips to listen. The boy's face was pressed close to the logs.
A wet paddle had flashed into the sunlight from out the bushes across
the river. He could just see a canoe in the shadows under them, and with
quick suspicion his brain pictured Jasper's horse hitched in the bushes,
and Jasper stealing across the river to waylay Rome. But the canoe moved
slowly out of sight downstream and toward the deep water, the paddler
unseen, and the boy looked around with a weak smile. Neither seemed to
have heard him. Rome was brooding, with his sullen face in his hands;
the old miller was busy with his own thoughts; and the boy turned again
to his watch.

Jasper did not come. Isom's eyes began to ache from the steady gaze, and
now and then he would drop them to the water swirling beneath. A slow
wind swayed the overhanging branches at the mouth of the stream, and
under them was an eddy. Escaping this, the froth and bubbles raced out
to the gleams beating the air from the sunlit river. He saw one tiny
fleet caught; a mass of yellow scum bore down and, sweeping through
bubbles and eddy, was itself struck into fragments by something afloat.
A tremulous shadow shot through a space of sunlight into the gloom cast
by a thicket of rhododendrons, and the boy caught his breath sharply. A
moment more, and the shape of a boat and a human figure quivered on the
water running under him. The stern of a Lewallen canoe swung into the
basin, and he sprang to his feet.

"Rome!" The cry cut sharply through the drowsy air. "Thar he is! Hit's
Jas!"

The old miller rose to his feet. The boy threw himself behind the sacks
of grain. Rome wheeled for his rifle, and stood rigid before the door.
There was a light step without, the click of a gun-lock within; a shadow
fell across the doorway, and a girl stood at the threshold with an empty
bag in her hand.

V

WITH a little cry she shrank back a step. Her face paled and her lips
trembled, and for a moment she could not speak. But her eyes swept the
group, and were fixed in two points of