noisily and the air hummed with the wings of bees. On the last spur, he came
upon a cow browsing on sassafras-bushes right in the path and the last shadow
of his loneliness straightway left him. She was old, mild, and unfearing, and
she started down the road in front of him as though she thought he had come to
drive her home, or as though she knew he was homeless and was leading him to
shelter. A little farther on, the river flashed up a welcome to him through
the trees and at the edge of the water, her mellow bell led him down stream
and he followed. In the next hollow, he stooped to drink from a branch that
ran across the road and, when he rose to start again, his bare feet stopped as
though riven suddenly to the ground; for, half way up the next low slope, was
another figure as motionless as his--with a bare head, bare feet, a startled
face and wide eyes--but motionless only until the eyes met his: then there was
a flash of bright hair and scarlet homespun, and the little feet, that had
trod down the centuries to meet his, left the earth as though they had wings
and Chad saw them, in swift flight, pass silently over the hill. The next
moment, Jack came too near the old brindle and, with a sweep of her horns at
him and a toss of tail and heels in the air, she, too, swept over the slope
and on, until the sound of her bell passed out of hearing. Even to-day, in
lonely parts of the Cumberland, the sudden coming of a stranger may put women
and children to flight-- something like this had happened before to Chad--but
the sudden desertion and the sudden silence drew him in a flash back to the
lonely cabin he had left and the lonely graves under the big poplar and, with
a quivering lip, he sat down. Jack, too, dropped to his haunches and sat
hopeless, but not for long. The chill of night was coming on and Jack was
getting hungry. So he rose presently and trotted ahead and squatted again,
looking back and waiting. But still Chad sat irresolute and in a moment, Jack
heard something that disturbed him, for he threw his ears toward the top of
the hill and, with a growl, trotted back to Chad and sat close to him, looking
up the slope. Chad rose then with his thumb on the lock of his gun and over
the hill came a tall figure and a short one, about Chad's size and a dog, with