within.

Sherd!

The girl's tone was full of gentle reproach, and so soft that it
reached only Clayton's ears.

Sherd!

This time his name was uttered with an appeal ever so gentle.

Pore dad! Pore dad! " she whispered. Her clasp tightened
suddenly on Clayton's hand, and her eyes were held to his, even
while the light in them was going out.

A week later two men left the cabin at dusk.

Half-way down the slope they came to one of the unspeakably
mournful little burying-grounds wherein the mountain people rest
after their narrow lives. It was unhedged, uncared for, and a few
crumbling boards for headstones told the living generation where
the dead were at rest. For a moment they paused to look at a spot
under a great beech where the earth had been lately disturbed.

"It air shorely hard to see," said one in a low, slow voice, "why she
was taken, 'n1 him left; why she should hev to give her life fer the
life he took. But He knows, He knows," the mountaineer
continued, with unfaltering trust; and then, after a moment's
struggle to reconcile fact with faith: "The Lord took whut He
keered fer most, 'n' she was ready, 'n' he wasn t.