"We lived where I live now, alone, an' then, as now, there was a little
bridge that took th' footpath over th' deep gully. Them days was wicked
ones in these here mountains, an' daddy'd had that foot-bridge fixed so
it would raise. My mother just had time to pull it up, when we had
crossed, before Lem Lindsay reached there. He stopped, to keep from
fallin' in the gully, but stood there, shakin' his bare fist an'
swearin' that he'd kill us yet. But that he couldn't do. Folks was
mightily roused, and he had to leave th' mountings, then an' thar, an'
ain't been in 'em since, so far as anybody knows."

Her brows drew down upon her eyes. Her sweet mouth hardened. "He'd
better _never_ come!" she added, grimly.

After a moment's pause she went on, slowly: "So, now, here we be--Joe
Lorey, Ben's son, an' me. My mother died, you see, not very many years
after Lindsay'd killed my daddy. Seein' of it done, that way, had been
too much for her. I reckon seein' it would have killed me, too, if I'd
been more'n a baby, but I wasn't, an' lived through it. Ben's lived
here, workin' his little mounting farm, an'--an'--"

She hesitated, evidently ill at ease, strangely stammering over an
apparently simple and unimportant statement of the condition of her
fellow orphan. She changed color slightly. Layson, watching her, decided
that the son of the one victim must be the sweetheart of the daughter of
the other, and would have smiled had not the very thought, to his
surprise, annoyed him unaccountably. Whether that was what had caused
her stammering, he could not quite decide, although he gave the matter
an absurd amount of thought. She went on quickly:

"He's lived here, workin' of his little mounting farm an'--an'--an'