her battle-field and renew her vows, saw Jeb sturdily plodding his way in long resolute strides through the woods toward the mill, with a heavy sack upon his shoulders, and a rifle swinging at his side. His face was sullen as usual, with downcast eyes, but he did not see her, and she did not call to him as he passed on and out of sight in the sun-burned woods. That day chance had it that no one else had come to mill and Bob McGreeger had persuaded the boy to drink from the "leetle blue kag" until his mind was ripe for mischief. While the mill-stones slowly crushed out his meal Jeb McNash sat on a pile of rubbish in the gloomy shack, nursing his knees in interlocked fingers. Old Bob drank and stormed, and cursed the inertia of the present generation. The lad's lean fingers tautened and gripped themselves more tensely and his eyes began to smolder and blaze with a wicked light as he listened.

"Ye looks like a right stand-up sort of a boy, Jeb," growled the old fire-eater, who had set more than a few couples at each other's throats. "An' I reckon hit's all right, too, fer a feller ter 'bide his time, but hit 'pears ter me like ther men of these days don't do nothin' but bide thar time.”

"I won't bide mine no longer then what I has ter," snapped the boy. "Anse 'lows ter tell me when he finds out who hit war thet got my pap. Thet's all I needs ter know."

Old Bob McGreeger shook his head knowingly and laughed in his tangled beard. "I reckon Anse Havey'll take his leisure. He's got other fish ter fry. He's a thinkin' 'bout bigger things than yore grievance,

son."

The boy rose and his voice came very quietly and ominously from suddenly whitened lips. "What does ye mean by thet, Uncle Bob?"

"Mebby I don't mean nothin' much. Then ergin mebby I could give ye a pretty-good idee who kilt yore pap. Mebby I could tell ye 'bout a feller - a feller thet hain't fur removed from Old Milt hisself-thet went 'snoopin' acrost ther ridge ther same day yore pap died, with a rifle-gun crost his elbow, an' his pockets strutty with ca'tridges."

It was as if each word were a hot needle galling and irritating the obsession about which the lad's thoughts had been pivoting and pirouetting for weeks with nightmare grotesquerie.

The finger nails of his two hands bit into their palms and his brows drew themselves into a wrinkled mask of malevolence.

"Who war he?" came the tense demand with the sudden snap of rifle-fire. "Who war thet feller?

Old Bob filled and lighted his pipe with fingers that had grown unsteady from the ministration of the "leetle blue kag." He laughed again in a satirical, drunken fashion.

"Ef Bad Anse Havey don't 'low ter tell ye, son," he artfully demurred, "I reckon hit wouldn't hardly be becomin' fer me ter name his name." 99

The boy picked up his battered hat. "Give me my grist," he said shortly. He stood by breathing heavily, but silently while the sack was being tied, then putting it down by the door, he wheeled and faced the older man.

"Now ye're a-goin' ter tell me what I needs ter

know," he said quietly, " or I'm a-goin' ter kill ye whar ye stands."

Uncle Bob laughed. He had meant all the while to impart that succulent bit of information, which was no information at all, but mischief-making suspicion. He had held off only to infuriate and envenom the boy with the cumulative force of climax.

"Hit warn't nobody but" after a pause he went on "but Old Milt McBriar's own son, young Milt.” "Thet's all," said Jeb soberly; "I'm obleeged ter ye."

He went out with the sack on his shoulder and the rifle under his arm, but when he had reached a place in the woods where a blind trail struck back, he deposited his sack carefully under a ledge of overhanging rock. The clouds were mounting and banking now in a threat of rain and since it was not his own meal he carried he must be doubly careful of its safety.

Then he crossed the ridge until he came to a point where the thicket grew down close and tangled to the road. He had seen young Milt going west along that road this morning and by nightfall he would be riding back. The gods of Chance were playing into his hands.

So he lay down, closely hugging the earth, and cocked his rifle. For hours he crouched there with unspeakable patience, while his muscles cramped and his feet and hands grew cold under the pelting of a rain which was strangely raw and chilling for the season. The sun sank in an angry bank of thunder heads and the west grew lurid. The drenching downpour blinded him and trickled down his spine under his clothes, but at

last he saw the figure he had expected, riding a horse which he knew. It was the same roan mare that Bad Anse had restored to Milt McBriar after that other day.

When young Milt rode slowly by, fifty yards away with his mount at a walk and his reins hanging he was untroubled by any anxiety because he was in his own territory and was at heart fearless. The older boy from Tribulation felt his temples throb and the rifle came slowly up, and the one eye which was not closed looked point-blank across immovable sights and along a steady barrel into the placid face of his intended victim. He could see the white of Milt's eye and the ragged lock of hair under the hat-brim which looked like a smudge of soot across his brow. Then slowly Jeb McNash shook his head. A spasm of battle went through him and shook him like a convulsion to the soles of his feet. He had but to crook his finger to appease his blood-lust—and break his pledge.

"I've done give Anse my hand ter bide my time. 'twell I war dead sartain," he told himself. "I hain't quite dead sartain yit. I reckon I've got ter wait a spell."

He uncocked the rifle and the other boy rode on, but young Jeb folded his arms on the wet earth and buried his face in them and sobbed, and it was an hour later that he stumbled to his feet and went groggily back, drunk with bitterness and emotion toward the house of Anse Havey. Yet when he arrived after nightfall his tongue told nothing and his features revealed less.

CHAPTER XVI

UANITA, living in the cabin she had built, with

JUA

the girl who had become her companion and satellite; making frequent hard journeys to some house which the shadow of illness had invaded, found it hard to believe that this life had been hers only a few months. Suspense seemed to stretch weeks to years and she awoke each new day braced to hear the news of some fresh outbreak, and wondered why she did not hear it. A few neighborhood children were already learning their rudiments, and plans for more building were going forward.

Sometimes Jeb came over from the brick house to see his sister and on the boy's face was always a dark cloud of settled resolve. If Juanita never questioned him on the topic that she knew was nearest his heart it was because she realized that to do so would be the surest way to estrange his friendship and confidence.

In one thing she had gained a point. She had bought as much property as she would need, probably much more than she would need unless her dreams were fulfilled to a degree that lay beyond the probabilities.

Back somewhere behind the veil of mysteries Anse Havey had pressed a button or spoken a word and all the hindrance that had lain across her path straightway evaporated. Men had come to her, with no further solicitation on her part, and now it seemed that