d. He stood just
where she had left him; looking at her, now again swaying his body in
that tense, sullen motion. And suddenly she began to laugh, leaning
forward in a crouching attitude, her hands clenched close to her knees.

"You didn't think, when you laid my Pappy across our door sill, that
he'd be avenged by a girl, did you!"

He only looked at her, staring in a dull, hopeless sort of way that
would have struck pity into the heart of anyone not so blinded by
passion.

"You didn't think, did ye," she taunted, with direful malice darting
from her eyes, and assuming the mountain dialect so her words would
carry a sharper sting, "that Dale Dawson could be headed off, did ye!
Yo' sorry life of ignorance never went so fur as ter reckon that poh,
ole Bill Whitly, shot down from behind, 'd be so sure in gittin'
vengeance, did ye! Ye thought my Pappy war the last of his line, jest as
you're the last of yourn!" Her laugh now became quite uncontrollable,
but between gasps she still fired taunts at him. "Didn't reckon yo' god
Natur' could raise some-un weaker'n ye ter crush ye out! Didn't reckin
hit war likely the last Dawson 'd be fetched down by the last
Whitly--'n' her a gal!"

As she descended to this, he arose. The next time she looked at him
through laughter and blinding tears, he was standing straight and still,
gazing calmly back at her. There was no motion to his body now, and his
hands were hanging inertly open at his sides. Slowly he crossed to her
and, with a dignity that was commanding, said:

"There'll be one left on my side, and that'll just balance your's. It's
the one who patched up that truce--that truce what ain't been broke by
any one of us, till now! But she's blind, an' maybe don't count for
much!"

Ah, the blind sister! She had forgotten her. The blind sister; that
physically helpless one whose spiritual strength had put into motion
this big, hulking frame of purpose, with its absorbing brain, to square
his shoulders before the world and succeed! A softness, a womanly
tenderness, came knocking at the door of Jane's heart, but she would not
hear. Dale looked down at her resentful face; but he felt no awe of her
now--this was the kind he understood!

"The mountains are so full of Whitlys, that I never thought of placin'
you as Bill's girl--I don't remember even knowin' that he had a girl!
Why'd you take me in school?"

"How did I know who killed him!" she answered, in a hard, dry voice.

Inten