He was scarcely over his surprise that the girl was young
Lewallen's sister, and the discovery had wrought a curious change.
The piquant impulse of rivalry was gone, and something deeper
was taking its place. He was confused and a good deal troubled,
thinking it all over. He tried to make out what the girl meant by
looking at him from the mountain-side, by waving her bonnet at
him, and by coming to old Gabe's mill when she could have gone
to her own. To be sure, she did not know then who he was, and
she had stopped coming when she learned; but why had she
crossed again that day? Perhaps she too was bantering him, and he
was at once angry and drawn to her; for her mettlesome spirit
touched his own love of daring, even when his humiliation was
most bitter-when she told him he warred on women; when he held
out to her the branch of peace and she swept it aside with a stroke
of her oar. But Rome was little conscious of the weight of subtle
facts like these. His unseeing eyes went back to her as she combed
her hair. He saw the color in her cheeks, the quick light in her
eyes, the naked, full throat once more, and the wavering forces of
his unsteady brain centred in a stubborn resolution-to see it all
again. He would make Isom stay at home, if need be, and he
would take the boy's place at the mill. If she came there no more,
he would cross the river again. Come peace or war, be she friend
or enemy, he would see her. His thirst was fierce again, and, with
this half-drunken determination in his heart, he stooped once more
to drink from the cheerful little stream. As he rose, a loud curse
smote the air. The river, pressed between two projecting cliffs,
was narrow at that point, and the oath came across the water. An
instant later a man led a lamed horse from behind a bowlder, and
stooped to examine its leg. The dusk was thickening, but Rome