Then he took the path to the river, and he found the canoe where
old Gabe had hidden it. Before the young moon rose he pushed
into the stream and drifted with the current. At the mouth of the
creek that ran over old Gabe's water-wheel he turned the prow to
the Lewallen shore.

Not yit! Not yit! " he said.

XV

THAT night Rome passed in the woods, with his rifle, in a bed of
leaves. Before
daybreak he had built a fire in a deep ravine to cook his breakfast,
and had scattered the embers that the smoke should give no sign.
The sun was high when he crept cautiously in sight of the
Lewallen cabin. It was much like his own home on the other shore,
except that the house, closed and desolate, was standing, and the
bees were busy. At the corner of the kitchen a rusty axe was
sticking in a half-cut piece of timber, and on the porch was a heap
of kindling and fire wood-the last work old Jasper and his son had
ever done. In the Lewallens' garden, also, two graves were fresh;
and the spirit of neglect and ruin overhung the place.

All the morning he waited in the edge of the laurel, peering down
the path, watching the clouds race with their shadows over the
mountains, or pacing to and fro in his covert of leaves and flowers.
He began to fear at last that she was not coming, that she was ill,
and once he started down the mountain toward Steve Brayton's
cabin. The swift descent brought him to his senses, and he
stopped half-way, and climbed back again to his hiding-place.