esence of any apparent intent of visiting a husbandless wife. Since no
one but himself knew that his jackal Sam Squires was at that moment
trailing after Parish Thornton as the beagle courses after the hare, he
could logically enough make such an inquiry.

"No. Didn't ye know? He started out soon this mornin'. I reckon he's fur
over to'rds Virginny by now."

"Oh!" Bas Rowlett seemed surprised, but he made prompt explanation. "I
knowed he hed hit in head ter go--but I didn't know he'd started yit."
For more than an hour their talk went on in friendly channels of
reminiscence and commonplace, then the man lifted the basket he had
brought. "I fotched some 'simmons offen thet tree by my house. Ye used
ter love 'em right good, Dorothy."

"I does still, Bas," she smiled with that sweet serenity that men found
irresistible as she reached for the basket, but the man sat with eyes
brimming melancholy and fixed on the violet haze of the skyline until
she noticed his abstraction and inquired: "What ails ye, Bas? Ye're in a
brown study erbout somethin'."

He drew back his shoulders then, and enlightened, "Sometimes I gits
thetaway. I fell ter thinkin' of them days when you an' me used ter
gather them 'simmons tergether, little gal."

"When we was kids," she answered, nodding her head. "We hed fun, didn't
we?"

"God Almighty," he exclaimed, impetuously and suddenly. "How I loved
ye!"

The girl drew away, and her answer was at once sympathetic and
defensive. "Thet war all a right long time back, Bas."

The defeated lover came to his feet and stood looking at her with a face
over which the passion of his feeling came with a sweep and surge that
he made no effort to control.

In that instant something had slipped in Bas Rowlett and the madman that
was part of him became temporarily all of him.

"Hit hain't so long a time ago," he vehemently declared, "thet I've
changed any in hits passin'. So long es I lives, Dorothy, I'll love ye
more an' more--till I dies."

She drew back another step and shook her head reprovingly, and in the
gravity of her eyes was the dawning of indignation, disappointment, and
astonishment.

"Bas," she said, earnestly, "even ef Cal hadn't of come, I couldn't
nuver hev wedded with ye. He did come, though, an'--in thet way of
carin'--thar hain't no other man in the world fer me. I kain't never pay
ye back fer all thet I'm beholden ter ye ... fer savin' him an' fotchin'
him in when thet craven shot h