e
weren't made ter put up a fight when that call comes--fer that call
don't mean fight, Miss Jane; it means surrender!"

"Oh, my mountain poet," she murmured, leaning gracefully nearer, "how
can you wear a modern harness with such a soul! But we cannot live
simply, as the animals and birds! Do you not see that a higher
civilization has taught us the greater meaning of these things?"

"No," he answered bluntly. "That call is the greatest meaning. Nothin'
don't stand one, two, three to it! If civilization chokes it, then
civilization is wrong!"

A feeling of conflict stirred in her. Here was this towering young god
whom the Great Chiseller had made so awkward, so uncontrollably selfish,
yet otherwise so fine, and he was deliberately leaving the one path of
all others which she had believed him most sure to follow. Ruth had sent
him to her untarnished, and now, while in her keeping, he was drifting
away! How could she ever answer those blind eyes if they questioned her
with their calm, sightless stare? Her hand left his chair and rested
lightly on his shoulder, and the voice which spoke to him seemed almost
hard:

"You are stumbling into a false reasoning! Civilization does not choke
the cry; it only directs the way men and women shall answer! You are not
forgetting your Sunlight Patch, are you?"

He started to speak, but changed his mind; while, without being noticed,
she bent nearer, intently watching.

"Well?" she asked.

"I don't know," he said with a touch of uncertainty, "I reckon maybe
it's all wrong up at Sunlight Patch, too!"

Tremendously moved, startled, fearful lest he drift entirely from her
reach, she slipped still lower and looked up into his face.

"What does this mean?" she asked. "What has happened to you, boy?"

Mac, feeling that something had gone wrong, came over and pushed his
head beneath her arm; and with this she held him, while her other hand
impulsively caught Dale's sleeve. A feeling of protectorship, a faint
consciousness of motherhood, gave her face an exquisite look of
entreaty. What men's lives might be had never taken a definite place in
her mind, for she had accepted much and passed over more. But she was
not pleading now so much for him, as she was for the trust that had been
imposed in her--the knowledge that her honor was answerable to the giver
of that trust!

"You will not forget your Sunlight Patch, Dale?" she whispered. "You
will promise me this?"

Slowly the answer