"How dast ye tech me?" she demanded, panting with wrath. "How dast ye?"

The boy laughed easily. "I dast do anything I wants," he told her. For a moment they stood looking at each other, then the girl dropped her eyes, but the anger had died out of them and Juanita saw that despite her condescending air, she was not displeased.

Juanita of course knew nothing of the suspicion which had led Jeb into the laurel on that summer afternoon, but even without that information when young Milt met them, more often than could be attributed to chance, on their walks and fell into the habit of strolling back with them, strong forebodings began to trouble her.

And one morning these forebodings were verified in crisis, for, while the youthful McBriar lounged near the porch of Juanita's cabin talking with Dawn, another shadow fell across the sunlight; the shadow of Jeb McNash. He had come silently and it was only as young Milt, whose back had been turned, shifted his position that the two boys recognized each other.

Juanita saw the start with which Jeb's figure stiffened and grew taut. She saw his hands clench themselves and his face turn as white as chalk; saw his chest rise and fall under heavy breathing that hissed through clenched teeth, and her own heart pounded with wild anxiety. But Milt McBriar's face showed nothing. His father's mask-like calmness of feature had come down to him, and as he read the meaning of the other boy's attitude, he merely nodded and said casually, "Howdy, Jeb."

Jeb did not answer.

He could not answer.

He was

straining and punishing every nerve fiber cruelly, simply in standing where he was and keeping his hands at his sides. For a time he remained stiff and white, breathing spasmodically, then without a word he turned and stalked away.

That noon a horseman brought a note across the ridge and as Juanita Holland read it she felt that all her dreams were crumbling and that the soul of them was paralyzed.

It was a brief note written in a copy-book hand.

"I'll have to ask you," it ran, "to send the McNash children over to my house. Jeb doesn't want them to be consorting with the McBriars, and I can't blame him. He is the head of his family.

A

CHAPTER XVII

STRONGER thing to Juanita Holland than the personal disappointment which had driven her

to this work was now her eager, fiery interest in the undertaking itself. In these months she had disabused herself of many prejudices that had at first blinded her. There remained that lingering one against the man with whom she had not made friends.

The thing she had set out to do was an hundredfold more vital now than it had been when it stood for carrying out a dead grandfather's wish. She had been with these people in childbirth and death, in sickness and want; she had seen summer go from its tender beginnings to a vagabond end with its tattered banners of ripened corn. Autumn had blazed and flared into high carnival.

Close to the heart of this woman lay a worship of the chivalric, not in its forms and panoplies, but in its in its scorn of the mean and untruthful; its passion of simple service; in its consecration to fighting for the weak.

essence

All those deep qualities were intimately wound up and tangled with the life and work she had undertaken. The laurel had clasped its root tendrils about her being, and to fail would surely break her heart.

She must conquer, she told herself, and unconsciously her thought even fell into the simple tensity of the

people about her and she stood murmuring to herself, "Oh, God, I've just got to win - I've just got to win!"

But as young Jeb had turned on his heel and stalked away, even before the coming of the note she knew what would happen, and what would happen not only in this instance, but in others like it. This would not be just losing Dawn, bad as that was. It would be paralysis and death to the school; it would mean the losing for all time of every Havey boy and girl.

So she stood there and afterward said quietly, "Milt, I guess you'd better go," and Milt had gone gravely and unquestioningly, but with that in his eye which did not argue brightly for restoration of peace between his house and that of his enemy.

When the two girls had gone together into the cabin Dawn stood with a face that blanched as she began to realize what it all meant, then slowly she stiffened and her hands, too, clenched and her eyes kindled.

For a while neither of them spoke. Until Jeb's appearance young Milt had simply been himself to Dawn, now as she looked back it was as if she reviewed the situation with her brother's eyes. She had been permitting a McBriar to walk in the woods with her and she had even smiled on him. Not only was it a McBriar, but with one exception the most responsible and typical of all the McBriars. Into her heart crept something of deep shame. She felt like a nun who has been recreant to all her vows and traditions. It seemed to her that her dead father's spirit was rebuking her and her dead mother scorning her. She would not let Milt speak to her again. She would not wipe her feet

on young Milt should he throw himself on the earth before her.

But deep and uncompromising as the clan loyalty was in her blood, another loyalty now stood above it. She was a Havey, but not even Haveys should tear her away from Juanita Holland, the woman she loved and deified.

She came across to the chair into which the older girl had dropped listlessly and, falling to her knees, seized both Juanita's hands. She seized them tightly and fiercely and her eyes were blazing and her voice broke from her lips in turgid vehemence. For them both the cheery note died out of the din of hammer and saw and the loud voices of the "house-raisers."

The triumph departed from the enspiriting sight of ox-teams snaking logs down the mountain-side. The whole dream picture faded. Like some mighty walking delegate, Anse Havey would speak the word and that activity would become useless. He would call a strike and those buildings would stand doomed to perpetual emptiness. After all, Juanita reflected, she was totally helpless.

"I hain't a-goin' ter leave ye," cried Dawn. "I hain't a-goin' ter do it." No word had been spoken of her leaving, but in this life they both knew that certain things bring certain results, and they were expecting a note from Bad Anse. "I hope not, dear," murmured Juanita without conviction.

Then the mountain girl sprang up and became transformed. With her rigid figure and blazing eyes she seemed a torch burning with all the pent-up heritage of her past.