accepted without questioning; but now he
drew his horse suddenly to a stop and took his hat from his head. For a
time he sat there in his saddle, as unmoving as though he and the beast
he rode were inanimate parts of an equestrian group; the statue of a
pioneer lad rough-mounted.

His face stiffened painfully, and he licked his lips. Finally he said to
the dark woods where the whippoorwills were calling and the fireflies
flickering:

"Great God! I mout jest as well fall in love with a star up thar in
heaven." Something like a groan escaped him, and after a while he
gathered up his reins. Again he spoke, but in a dull voice:

"I'll quit afore I get in too far. Tomorrow night I'll go over thar and
'set up' with Happy Spradling."

He remembered how they had laughed at him at college when, quite
naturally, he had used that term, "settin' up with a gal," to express
the idea of courtship. Now he laughed himself, but bitterly. That was
what his own people called it, and, after all, it was better to remember
that he was of his own people.

The next night Boone kept his word. He brushed his clothes and did what
he could with the unruly crispness of his hair, and then he set out for
the log house of Cyrus Spradling on the headwaters of Snag Ridge.

He was not going on this, his first formal visit to a girl, with such
leaping pulses as might have been expected. He was following out an
almost grim determination quite devoid of eagerness. Having lost his
heart to royalty, he was now bent on forcing himself back into a society
where he had a right to be.

He had not slept much that night after the excursion to Slag-face, and
what sleep he had had, had been troubled by dreams in which Anne had
stood smiling down on him from the mountain top, while he looked up from
a deep gorge where the shadows lay black. He was driven by a mad sense
of necessity to climb up and stand beside her--but always he slid back,
or fell from narrow ledges, until he was bruised, bleeding--and
unsuccessful. He woke up panting, and afterward dreamed the same thing
over. And every time he fell he found Happy waiting in the gorge and
saying, "Why don't ye stay here with me? You don't have to climb after
me--and I'm a right pretty gal." Always too he answered, in the words
that Anne had used, "Why do I want to go up there? Up there you'd be
looking down on everything but the clouds themselves"--and he would
begin climbing once more, clutching with raw fin