the woods.

On the morning after Happy had fled from him, under the spurring of her
discovered secret, she had not been able with all her bravery of effort
to hide from the family about the daybreak breakfast table the traces of
a sleepless and tearful night. To Happy, this morning the murky room
which was both kitchen and dining hall seemed the epitome of sordidness,
with its newspaper-plastered walls and creaking puncheon floor.
Yesterday each depressing detail had been alleviated by the thought that
the future held a promise of release. Contemplating delivery, one can
laugh gaily in a cell, but now the dungeon doors seemed to have been
permanently closed and the key thrown away.

"Happy's done been cryin'," shrilled one of the youngest of the brother
and sister brood--for that was a typical mountain family to which, for
years, each spring had brought its fresh item of humanity. As Cyrus
pithily expressed it, "Thar hain't but only fo'teen of us settin' down
ter eat when everybody's home."

Old Cyrus put a stern quietus on the chorus of questioning elicited by
the proclaiming of his daughter's grief.

"Ef she's been cryin', thet's her own business," he announced. "I reckon
she don't need ter name what hit's erbout every time she laughs or
weeps."

And, such is the value of the patriarchal edict, the tumult was promptly
stilled.

Yet the head of the house, himself, could not so readily dismiss a
realization of the unwonted pallor on cheeks normally soft and rosily
colourful. The eyes were undeniably wretched and deeply ringed. To
himself Cyrus said, "They've jest only done had a lovers' quarrel. Young
folks is bound ter foller fallin' out as well as fallin' in, I reckon."

Neither that day nor the next, however, did the girl "live right up to
her name," and on the following night Boone did not come over to sue for
peace, as a lover should, under such April conditions of sun and storm.

"What does ye reckon's done come over 'em, Maw?" the father eventually
inquired, and the mother shook her perplexed head.

The two of them were alone on the porch just then, save for one of the
youngest children, who was deeply absorbed with the feeding of a small
and crippled lamb from a nursing bottle improvised out of a whiskey
flask.

Slowly the old man's face clouded, until it wore so forebodingly sombre
a look as the wife had not seen upon it since years before when life had
run black. Then, despite all his efforts to "c