"Git out o' my way, Jim Spurgill." The boy stepped quickly from the path and she swept past him. "Allaphair, lemme walk home with ye." The girl neither answered nor turned her head, though she heard his footsteps behind her. "Allaphair, uh, Allaphair, please lemme--" He broke off abruptly and sprang behind a tree, for Allaphair's ungentle ways were widely known. The girl had stooped for a stone and was wheeling with it in her hand. Gingerly the boy poked his head out from behind the tree, prepared to dodge. "You're wuss'n a she-wolf in sucklin' time," he grumbled, and the girl did not seem displeased. Indeed, there was a grim smile on her scarlet lips when she dropped the stone and stalked on. It was almost an hour before she crossed a foot-log and took the level sandy curve about a little bluff, whence she could see the two-roomed log cabin that was home. There were flowers in the little yard and morning-glories covered the small porch, for, boyish as she was, she loved flowers and growing things. A shrill cry of welcome greeted her at the gate, and she swept the baby sister toddling toward her high above her head, fondled her in her arms, and stopped on the threshold. Within was another man, slight and pale and a stranger. "This is the new school-teacher, Allaphair," said her mother. "He calls hisself Iry Combs." "How-dye!" said the girl, but the slight man rose and came forward to shake hands. She flashed a frown at her mother a moment later, behind the stranger's back; teachers boarded around and he might be there for a week and perhaps more. The teacher was mountain born and bred, but he had been to the Bluegrass to school, and he had brought back certain little niceties of dress, bearing, and speech that irritated the girl. He ate slowly and little, for he had what he called indigestion, whatever that was. Distinctly he was shy, and his only vague appeal to her was in his eyes, which were big, dark, and lonely. It was a disgrace for Allaphair to have reached her years of one-and-twenty without marrying, and the disgrace was just then her mother's favorite theme. Feeling rather poorly, the old woman began on it that afternoon. Allaphair had gone out to the woodpile and was picking up an armful of firewood, and the mother had followed her. Said Allaphair: