or
McCalloway's house, was only two years younger than Boone. When he had
gone away, a lad of seventeen, he had been untroubled by thoughts of
girls, and she had certainly wasted no meditation upon him.

But the Boone who came back was not quite the same boy who had gone
away. He was still roughly dressed, judged by exacting standards, but
corduroy had supplanted his old jeans, and he returned with a much
developed figure and an improved bearing.

Now one afternoon Happy Spradling stood with a pail, by a
"spring-branch" of crystal water, as Boone came by and halted. She, too,
had been to one of those settlement schools that were just beginning to
introduce new standards in the hills, and her homecoming to unrelieved
crudities was not an unmixed pleasure. Certain it is that the slim girl
in her calico gown was blessed with a fresh and vigorous beauty. Her
sloe-brown eyes were heavy lashed, and her skin was blossom clear. Dark
hair crowned her well-poised head in heavy masses--and the boy was
surprised because he had not remembered her as so lovely.

"Ye look right sensibly like a picture outen ther Bible of Rebekkah at
the well," he banteringly announced, and the girl flushed.

"Ye ain't quite so uncurried of guise as ye used to be your own self,
Boone," she generously acceded, and they both laughed.

They talked on for a while, and before Boone started away the girl
invited shyly, with lids that drooped, "Come over sometime, Boone, an'
tell me all about the college."

But it happened that the next day he went, with a note from McCalloway,
to the home of Larry Masters, the "mine boss," at the edge of Marlin
Town, and there fate ambushed him in the person of the girl who had
asked him to dance at the Christmas party.

Anne Masters came to the door in response to the boy's knock, and when
he had seen her he stood hesitant with his eyes fixed upon her until her
cheeks flushed, while he forgot the note he had brought for her father.

Anne herself did not recognize him at first, for Boone stood close to
six feet now, and although he would always be, in a fashion, careless of
dress, he would never again be the sloven, as were the kinsmen about
him. His corduroy breeches, flannel shirt and boots that laced halfway
up the calf, all seemed a part of himself, like a falcon's plumage. But
what the girl noticed first, since she was both young and
impressionable, was the crisp curl of his red brown hair and the direct
fearle