“What you goin’ to do with your pile?” he inquired. The Inger sat clasping his knees, looking up at the height of Whiteface, thick black in the thin darkness. His face was relaxed and there was a boyishness and a sweetness in his grave mouth. “Nothin’,” he said, “till I get the pull to leave here.” “To leave Inch?” said his father, incredulously. “To leave here,” the Inger repeated, throwing out his arm to the wood. “This is good enough for me—for a while yet.” “I thought mebbe the society down there,” said his father, with a jerk of his head to the lights in the valley, “was givin’ you some call to sit by.” The Inger sprang up. “So it is,” he said, “to-night. Bunchy’s gettin’ spliced.” “Who’s the antagonist?” asked the other. “The Moor girl,” said the Inger. “Bunchy’s a fine lot to draw her,” he added. “She’s too good a hand for him. Want to go down and see it pulled off?” he asked. His father hesitated, looking down the valley to the humble sparkling of Inch. “I don’t reckon I really _want_ to get drunk to-night,” he said slowly. “I’ll save up till I do.” The Inger stretched prodigiously, bunching his great shoulders, lifting his tense arms, baring their magnificent muscles. “I gotta, I guess,” he said. “But, gosh, how I hate it.” He carried the remnants of the food into the hut, and made his simple preparation for festivity. As he emerged he was arrested by a faint stirring and fluttering. He listened and it was near at hand, and then he saw the wood duck, writhing at the end of the string that bound its legs. Beneath it lay a little dark pool. “No sense in bleedin’ _all_ the good out of ye,” thought the Inger, and with the butt of the six-shooter that he was pocketing, he struck the bird a friendly blow on the head and stilled it. * * * * * The forest lay in premature night, save where a little mountain brook caught and treasured the dying daylight. It was intensely still. The Inger’s tread and brushing at the thickets silenced whatever movement of tiny life had been stirring before him. The trail wound for half a mile down the incline, in the never-broken growth.