slow stress of earnestness. "But I'd always sort of
seed in my own mind a fam'ly hyar--with another man ter tek my place at
hits head when I war dead an' gone. I'd always thought of Bas Rowlett in
that guise. He's a man thet's done been, in a manner of speakin', like a
son ter me."

"Bas Rowlett----" began Dorothy but the old man lifted a hand in command
for silence. "Let me git through fust," he interrupted her. "Then ye kin
hev yore say. Thar's two reasons why I'd favoured Bas. One of them was
because he's a sober young man thet's got things hung up." There he
paused, and the quaint phrase he had employed to express prosperity and
thrift summed up his one argument for materialistic considerations.

"Thet's jest one reason," went on Caleb Harper, soberly, "an' save fer
statin' hit es I goes along I hain't got nuthin' more ter say erbout
hit--albeit hit seems ter me a right pithy matter fer young folks ter
study erbout. I don't jedgmatically know nothin' erbout _yore_ affairs,"
he nodded his head toward Maggard. "So fur's I've got any means ter
tell, ye mout be independent rich or ye mout not hev nothin' only ther
shirt an' pants ye sots thar in ... but thet kin go by, too. Ef my gal
kain't be content withouten ye, she kin sheer with ye ... an' I aims ter
leave her a good farm without no debt on hit."

The girl had been standing silent and attentive while he talked, but the
clear and delicate modelling of her face had changed under the resolute
quality of her expression until now it typified a will as unbreakable as
his own.

Her chin was high and her eyes full of lightnings, held back yet ready
to break, if need be, into battle fires.

Now her voice came in that low restraint in which ultimatums are spoken.

"Whatever ye leaves me in land an' money hain't nuthin' ter me--ef I
kain't love ther man I weds with. An' whilst I seeks ter be
dutiful--thar hain't no power under heaven kin fo'ce me ter wed with no
other!"

The old man seemed hardly to hear the interruption as he paused, while
in his eyes ancient fires seemed to be awakening, and as he spoke from
that point on those fires burned to a zealot's fervour.

"Nuther one of ye don't remember back ter them days when ther curse
of ther Harper-Doane war lay in a blood pestilence over these hyar
hills ... but I remembers hit. In them sorry times folks war hurtin' fer
vittles ter keep life in thar bodies ... yit no man warn't safe workin'
out in his open field. I