arting.
For a moment the miller watched the young fellow striding away under his
rifle.

"I have been atter peace a good while," he said to himself, "but I
reckon thar's a bigger hand a-workin' now than mine." Then he lifted his
voice. "Ef Isom's too sick to come down to the mill to-morrer, I wish
you'd come 'n' holp me."

Rome nodded back over his shoulder, and went on, with head bent, along
the river road. Passing a clump of pines at the next curve, he pulled a
bottle from his pocket.

"Uncle Gabe's about right, I reckon," he said, half aloud; and he raised
it above his head to hurl it away, but checked it in mid-air. For a
moment he looked at the colorless liquid, then, with quick nervousness,
pulled the cork of sassafras leaves, gulped down the pale moonshine, and
dashed the bottle against the trunk of a beech. The fiery stuff does
its work in a hurry. He was thirsty when he reached the mouth of a brook
that tumbled down the mountain along the pathway that would lead him
home, and he stooped to drink where the water sparkled in a rift of
dim light from overhead. Then he sat upright on a stone, with his wide
hat-brim curved in a crescent over his forehead, his hands caught about
his knees, and his eyes on the empty air.

He was scarcely over his surprise that the girl was young Lewallen's
sister, and the discovery had wrought a curious change. The piquant
impulse of rivalry was gone, and something deeper was taking its place.
He was confused and a good deal troubled, thinking it all over. He
tried to make out what the girl meant by looking at him from the
mountain-side, by waving her bonnet at him, and by coming to old Gabe's
mill when she could have gone to her own. To be sure, she did not know
then who he was, and she had stopped coming when she learned; but why
had she crossed again that day? Perhaps she too was bantering him, and
he was at once angry and drawn to her; for her mettlesome spirit touched
his own love of daring, even when his humiliation was most bitter-when
she told him he warred on women; when he held out to her the branch
of peace and she swept it aside with a stroke of her oar. But Rome was
little conscious of the weight of subtle facts like these. His unseeing
eyes went back to her as she combed her hair. He saw the color in her
cheeks, the quick light in her eyes, the naked, full throat once more,
and the wavering forces of his unsteady brain centred in a stubborn
resolution-to see it all