e did not speak at all until he had
come with deliberate steps down to the stile, where he faced the visitor
across the boundary fence, as a defending force might parley over a
frontier. Then raising a long arm and a pointed finger down the road, he
spoke the one word, "Begone!"

"I came to see Happy," said the visitor steadily. "I don't think she is
nursing any grudge."

"No," the old fellow's eyes flashed dangerously; "women folks kin be too
damn fergivin', I reckon. Hit war because she exacted a pledge from me
to keep hands off thet I ever let matters slide in ther first place. I
don't know what come ter pass. She hain't nuver told me--but I knows you
broke her heart some fashion. Many a mountain war has done been started
fer less."

Boone straightened a little and his chin came up, but still there was no
resentment in his voice:

"Then I can't see your daughter--at your house? Will you tell her that I
sought to?"

In a hard voice Cyrus answered: "No--ef she war hyar I wouldn't give her
no message from ye whatsoever--but since she ain't hyar thet don't make
no great differ."

"Where is she?"

"Thet's her business--and mine. Hit hain't none o' yourn--. An' now,
begone!"

Boone turned on his heel and strode away, but it was only from other
neighbours that he learned that a second school, similar to the one
which the girl herself had attended, was being started some forty miles
away in a district that had heard of the first, and had sent out the
cry, "Come over into Macedonia and help us!"

To that school Happy had gone--this time as a teacher of the younger
children.

But before the summer ended Anne came to Marlin Town, and though she
had been at an Eastern college Boone found no change in her save that
her beauty seemed more radiant and her graciousness more winning. He had
been a trifle afraid of meeting her, this time, because he felt more
keenly than in the past how many allowances her indulgence must make for
his crudities.

But Anne knew many men who had the superficial qualities that Boone
coveted--and little else. What she did see in her old playmate was a
fellow superbly fitted for companionship out under the broad skies, and,
above all, she loved the open places and the freedom of the hills where
the eagles nested in their high eyries.

"I love it all," she exclaimed one day, with an outsweep of her arms. "I
believe that somewhere back in my family tree there must have been an
unaccounted-f