The Heart of the Hills | Page 8

bloody lip and with the lust of
battle still shaking him from head to foot.
"Jason," said the old man sternly, "whut's the matter out hyeh?"
Marjorie pointed one finger at Mavis, started to speak, and stopped.
Jason's eyes fell.
"Nothin'," he said sullenly, and Colonel Pendleton looked to his son
with astonished inquiry, and the lad's fine face turned bewildered and
foolish.

"I don't know, sir," he said at last.
"Don't know?" echoed the colonel. "Well--"
The old man broke in:
"Jason, if you have lost yo' manners an' don't know how to behave
when thar's strangers around, I reckon you'd better go on home."
The boy did not lift his eyes.
"I was a-goin' home anyhow," he said, still sullen, and he turned.
"Oh, no!" said the colonel quickly; "this won't do. Come now--you two
boys shake hands."
At once the stranger lad walked forward to his enemy, and confused
Jason gave him a limp hand. The old man laughed. "Come on in,
Jason--you an' Mavis--an' stay to supper."
The boy shook his head.
"I got to be gittin' back home," he said, and without a word more he
turned again. Marjorie looked toward the little girl, but she, 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 what they were fighting about, and just why they were Jason
himself couldn't quite make out now; but he knew that even now, in
spite of the hand-shaking truce, he would at the snap of a finger go at
the stranger again. And little Mavis knew now that it was not fear that
made the stranger girl scream--and she, too, was puzzled. She even felt
that the scorn in Marjorie's face was not personal, but she had shrunk
from it as from the sudden lash of a whip. The stranger girl, too, had
not blabbed but had even seemed to smile her forgiveness when Mavis
turned, with no good-by, to follow Jason. Hand in hand the two little
mountaineers had crossed the threshold of a new world that day.
Together they were going back into their own, but the clutch of the new
was tight on both, and while neither could have explained, there was
the same thought in each mind, the same nameless dissatisfaction in
each heart, and both were in the throes of the same new birth.
The sun was sinking when they started up the spur, and unconsciously
Jason hurried his steps and the girl followed hard. The twin spirals of
smoke were visible now, and where the path forked the boy stopped
and turned, jerking his thumb toward her cabin and his.
"Ef anything happens"--he paused, and the girl nodded her
understanding--"you an' me air goin' to stay hyeh in the mountains an'
git married."
"Yes, Jasie," she said.

His tone was matter-of-fact and so was hers, nor did she show any
surprise at the suddenness of what he said, and Jason, not looking at her,
failed to see a faint flush come to her cheek. He turned to go, but she
stood still, looking down into the gloomy, darkening ravine below her.
A bear's tracks had been found in that ravine only the day before. "Air
ye afeerd?" he asked tolerantly, and she nodded mutely.
"I'll take ye down," he said with sudden gentleness.
The tall mountaineer was standing on the porch of the cabin, and with
assurance and dignity Jason strode ahead with a protecting air to the