from ambush, and it was a Hawn, the Honeycutts claimed, who had
made him pay the death price of treachery to his own kin. But when
peace came, this fact did not save the lad from taunt and
suspicion from the children of the Honeycutt tribe, and being a
favorite with his Grandfather Hawn down on the river, and harshly
treated by his Honeycutt mother, his life on the other side in the
other cove was a hard one; so his heart had gone back to his own
people and, having no companions, he had made a playmate of his
little cousin, Mavis, over the spur. In time her mother had died,
and in time her father, Steve, had begun slouching over the spur
to court the widow--his cousin's widow, Martha Hawn. Straightway
the fact had caused no little gossip up and down both creeks,
good-natured gossip at first, but, now that the relations between
the two clans were once more strained, there was open censure, and
on that day when all the men of both factions had gone to the
county-seat, the boy knew that Steve Hawn had stayed at home for
no other reason than to make his visit that day secret; and the
lad's brain, as he strode ahead of his silent little companion,
was busy with the significance of what was sure to come.

At the mouth of the branch, the two came upon a road that also ran
down to the river, but they kept on close to the bank of the
stream which widened as they travelled--the boy striding ahead
without looking back, the girl following like a shadow. Still
again they crossed the road, where it ran over the foot of the
spur and turned down into a deep bowl filled to the brim with bush
and tree, and there, where a wide pool lay asleep in thick shadow,
the lad pulled forth the ball of earth and worms from his pocket,
dropped them with the fishing-pole to the ground, and turned
ungallantly to his bow and arrow. By the time he had strung it,