presence he found happiness much greater than he had ever known, could
ever know, elsewhere.

"You goin' to git too good fer--me?" he asked.

She turned toward him impulsively. Great friendship shone frankly in her
fine eyes. On her face was that expression of complete and understanding
comradery which one child chum may show another. Almost she said as much
of him as she had said of the surrounding mountains, but there was that
upon his face which stopped her. It was too plain that friendship was
not what he wanted, would not satisfy him. There was a hungry yearning
in his eyes, mute, respectful, worshipful, not for comradery, but for a
closer tie. She had watched this grow in him within the recent months,
with worry and regret. It seemed to her a tragedy that their old
friendship should ever prove inadequate.

"No," she answered gently, "I shall never get too good for you, Joe--for
any of my friends."

He looked, almost with aversion, at the book she held so closely. He
distrusted books. Instinctively he felt them to be enemies.

"If you get them there ideas about learnin', an' all that, you will!" he
gruffly said. "Leastways you'll be goin' off, some day an' leavin'
us--me, the mountings an'--an' all yer friends up here."

An expression of great earnestness, of almost fierce intensity grew in
his face. "Madge," he said, "Madge Brierly, you're makin' a mistake!
You're plannin' things to take you off from here; you're plannin' things
to make you suffer, later on. You're gettin' bluegrass notions, an'