couldn't live hyeh without you. But y'u must git away, Rome, 'n'
git away mighty quick."

With hands clasped behind him, Rome stood and watched the bent
figure slowly pick its way around the stony cliff.

"I reckon I've got to go. She's ag'in' me; they're all ag'in' me. I
reckon I've jes got to go. Somehow, I've been kinder hopin'-" He
closed his lips to check the groan that rose to them, and turned
again into the gloom behind him.

XIV

JUNE came. The wild rose swayed above its image along every
little shadowed stream, and the scent of wild grapes was sweet in
the air and as vagrant as a bluebird's note in autumn. The
rhododendrons burst into beauty, making gray ridge and gray cliff
blossom with purple, hedging streams with snowy clusters and
shining leaves, and lighting up dark coverts in the woods as with
white stars. The leaves were full, woodthrushes sang, and bees
droned like unseen running water in the woods.

With June came circuit court once more-and the soldiers. Faint
music pierced the dreamy chant of the river one morning as Rome
lay on a bowlder in the summer sun; and he watched the guns
flashing like another stream along the water, and then looked again
to the Lewallen cabin. Never, morning, noon, or night, when he
came from the rhododendrons, or when they closed about him, did
he fail to turn his eyes that way. Often he would see a bright speck
moving about the dim lines of the cabin, and he would scarcely