smart and sting. Even as, smilingly, he came up to the strangely mounted
maid, there was on his face the strong trace of that hunted look which
furtive consciousness of continual and unrelenting pursuit gives to the
lawbreaker--even to the lawbreaker who believes the laws he breaks are
wrong and to be violated without sin and righteously.

"That you, Joe?" said the girl. "You skeered me."

"Did I?" he replied, grinning broadly. "Didn't plan to."

From far below there came the crash of bursting powder. Quick and lithe
as a panther the man whirled, ready with his rifle. The girl laughed.

"Nothin' but the railroad blastin' down there in the valley," she said
with amusement. "Ain't you uset to that, yet?"

"No," said he, "I ain't--an' never will be."

His tone was definitely bitter. Never were the "sounds of progress more
ungraciously received than there among the mountains by the folk who
had, hedged in by their fastnesses, become almost a race apart,
ignorant of the outside world's progressions and distrustful and
suspicious of them.

"Where you goin', Madge?" he asked, plodding on beside the lurching ox.

"I ain't tellin'," she said briefly. "But you can go part ways--you can
go fur as th' pasture bars."

"Why can't I go as fur as you go?"