heavy, grizzled brows.

"No, I ain't," retorted the girl, and her voice was sullen and defiant.

"See you don't, lessen yo' want me to tickle yore back with the bud
again. I don't allow to put up with no foolishness." He turned in
explanation to the boy. "Brad Nickson seen him this side of the river
to-day. He says this ain't the fustest time Roush has been seen hangin'
'round the cove."

The boy's wooden face betrayed nothing. He did not look at his sister.
But suspicions began to troop through his mind. He thought again of the
voices he had heard by the river and he remembered that it had become a
habit of the girl to disappear for hours in the afternoon.

'Lindy went to her room early. She nursed against her father not only
resentment, but a strong feeling of injustice. He would not let her
attend the frolics of the neighborhood because of his scruples against
dancing. Yet she had heard him tell how he used to dance till daybreak
when he was a young man. What right had he to cut her off from the things
that made life tolerable?

She was the heritor of lawless, self-willed, passionate ancestors. Their
turbulent blood beat in her veins. All the safeguards that should have
hedged her were gone. A wise mother, an understanding father, could have
saved her from the tragedy waiting to engulf her. But she had neither of
these. Instead, her father's inhibitions pushed her toward that doom to
which she was moving blindfold.

Before her cracked mirror the girl dressed herself bravely in her cheap