she stepped lightly after it, and, without looking behind her,
disappeared in the bushes.

The boy Isom was riding away when Rome, turned, and old Gabe
was watching from the door of the mill.

Who is that gal? " he asked, slowly. It seemed somehow that he
had known her a long while ago. A puzzled frown overlay his
face, and the old miller laughed.

"You a-axin' who she be, 'n' she a-axin who you be, 'n' both o' ye
a-knowin' one 'nother sence ye was knee-high. Why, boy, hit's old
Jasper's gal-Marthy!

VI

IN a flash of memory Rome saw the girl as vividly as when he last
saw her years ago.
They had met at the mill, he with his father, she with hers. There
was a quarrel, and the two men were held apart. But the old sore
as usual was opened, and a week later Rome's father was killed
from the brush. He remembered his mother's rage and grief, her
calls for vcngeance, the uprising, the fights, plots, and ambushes.
He remembered the look the girl had given him that long ago, and
her look that day was little changed.

When fighting began, she had been sent for safety to the sister of
her dead mother in another county. When peace came, old Jasper
married again and the girl refused to come home. Lately the
step-mother, too, had passed away, and then she came back to live.