too, was starting.

"I better be gittin' back too," she said shyly, and off she ran.
Old Jason laughed again.

"Jes' like two young roosters out thar in my barnyard," and he
turned with the colonel toward the house. But Marjorie and her
cousin stood in the porch and watched the two little mountaineers
until, without once looking back, they passed over the sunlit
hill.




IV

On they trudged, the boy plodding sturdily ahead, the little girl
slipping mountain-fashion behind. Not once did she come abreast
with him, and not one word did either say, but the mind and heart
of both were busy. All the way the frown over-casting the boy's
face stayed like a shadow, for he had left trouble at home, he had
met trouble, and to trouble he was going back. The old was
definite enough and he knew how to handle it, but the new bothered
him sorely. That stranger boy was a fighter, and Jason's honest
soul told him that if interference had not come he would have been
whipped, and his pride was still smarting with every step. The new
boy had not tried to bite, or gouge, or to hit him when he was on
top--facts that puzzled the mountain boy; he hadn't whimpered and
he hadn't blabbed--not even the insult Jason had hurled with eye
and tongue at his girl-clad legs. He had said that he didn't know