The Man Thou Gavest | Page 8

and held out her thin, delicate hand:
"Mister Outlander, we're going to be neighbours, aren't we?"
"Yes--neighbours!" Truedale took the hand with a distinct sense of
suffocation, "but why do you call me an outlander?"
"Because--you are! You're not of our mountains."

"No, I wish I were!"
"Wishing can't make you. You are--or you aren't."
Truedale noted the girl's language. Distorted and crude as it often was,
it was never positively illiterate. This surprised him.
"You--oh! you're not going yet!" He put his hand out, for the definite
way in which Nella-Rose turned was ominous. Already she seemed to
belong to the cabin room--to Truedale himself. Not a suggestion of
strangeness clung to her. It was as if she had always been there but that
his eyes had been holden.
"I must go!"
"Wait--oh! Nella-Rose. Let me walk part of the way with you. I--I have
a thousand things to say."
But she was gone out of the door, down the path.
Truedale stood and looked after her until the long shadows reached up
to Lone Dome's sharpest edge. White's dogs began nosing about,
suggesting attention to affairs nearer at hand. Then Truedale sighed as
if waking from a dream. He performed the duties Jim had left to his
tender mercy--the feeding of the animals, the piling up of wood. Then
he forced himself to take a long walk. He ate his evening meal late, and
finally sat down to his task of writing letters. He wrote six to Brace
Kendall and tore them up; he wrote one to his uncle and put it aside for
consideration when the effect of his day dreams left him sane enough to
judge it. Finally he managed a note to Dr. McPherson and one to Lynda
Kendall.
"I think"--so the letter to Lynda ran--"that I will work regularly, now,
on the play. With more blood in my own body I can hope to put more
into that. I'm going to get it out to-morrow and begin the infusion. I
wish you were here to-night--to see the wonderful effect of the moon
on the mists--but there! if I said more you might guess where I am.
When I come back I shall try to describe it and some day you must see

it. Several times lately I have imagined an existence here with one's
work and enough to subsist on. No worry, no nerve-racking, and
always the tremendous beauty to inspire one! Nothing seems wholly
real here."
Then Truedale put down his pen. Nella-Rose crowded Lynda Kendall
from the field of vision; later, he simply signed his name and let the
note go with that.
As for Nella-Rose, as soon as she left Truedale, her mind turned to
sterner matters close at hand. She became aware before long of some
one near by. The person, whoever it was, seemed determined to remain
hidden but for that very reason it called out all the girl's cunning and
cleverness. It might be--Burke Lawson! With this thought Nella-Rose
gasped a little. Then, it might be Marg; and here the dark eyes grew
hard--the lips almost cruel! She got down upon her knees and crawled
like a veritable little animal of the wilds. Keeping close to the ground,
she advanced to where the trail from Lone Dome met the broader one,
and there, standing undecided and bewildered, was a tall, fair girl.
Nella-Rose sprang to her feet, her eyes ablaze.
"Marg! What you--hounding me for?"
"Nella-Rose, where you been?"
"What's that to you?"
"You've been up to Devil-may-come Hollow!"
"Have I? Let me pass, Marg. Have your mully-grubs, if you please; I'm
going home."
As Nella-Rose tried to pass, Marg caught her by the arm.
"Burke's back!" she whispered, "he's hiding up to Devil-may-come!
He's been seen and you know it!"
"What if I do?" Nella-Rose never ignored a possible escape for the

future.
"You've been up there--to meet him. You ought to be licked. If you
don't let him alone--let him and me alone--I'll turn Jed on him, I will; I
swear it!"
"What is he--to you!" Nella-Rose confronted her sister squarely. Blue
eyes--bold, cold blue they were--looked into dark ones even now so
soft and winning that it was difficult to resist them.
"If you let him alone, he'll be everything to me!" Marg blurted out.
"What do you want of him, Nella-Rose?--of him or any other man? But
if you must have a sweetheart, pick and choose and let me have my
day."
The rough appeal struck almost brutally on Nella-Rose's ears. She was
as un-moral, perhaps, as Marg, but she was more discriminating.
"I'm mighty tired of cleaning and cooking for--for father and you!"
Marg tossed her head toward Lone Dome. "Father's mostly always
drunk these days and you--what do you care what becomes of me?
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