He listened, his chin in his hand, his elbow on the rock. She should not delude him again; he would not succumb to her influence. He felt the handle of the pistol in his pocket. There was affirmation in its very touch. “Gamesome ain’t what _he_ said. He ’lowed I war m’licious.” Once more he glanced up to read the truth in her eyes. He slowly pulled himself to his feet. He stood for a moment, erect and jaunty, his hand thrust in his leather belt, his eyes bright and confident, his hair tossing back as he moved his head. “Ye tole him how good he war,” his merciless divinations went on. She cowered beneath his serene and casual glance. “Ye don’t deny it, an’ yit ye expec’ me ter not b’lieve what the whole kentry air a-sayin’,—ez ye hev promised ter marry him an’ hev gin me the go-by.” He turned abruptly away. “Reuben,” she cried, “air ye goin’ agin, when ye hev jes’ kem back?” She laid her importunate hands upon his arm. His resolution was strong now; he could afford to be lenient and to humor her. “’Bleeged ter, Lethe,” he said softly, looking down upon her with the calmness of finality. She did not loose her hold. “Ef ye keep me a-foolin’ hyar longer ’n I oughter stay, I mought git cotched agin,” he warned her—“fur twenty year! Jake Jessup would ez soon arrest me ez not.” She relaxed her grasp, looking fearfully about her in the mist and at the summit of the great rocks. She followed him, the old hound by her side, down to the spot where the horse still stood hitched. “But ye’ll kem back agin, Reuben?” she said, her heart-break in her voice, her eyes full of tears. “Laws-a-massy, yes; times an’ times. I kin whistle plumb like a mocking-bird, an’ whenever ye hear one a-singin’ the same chune three times ye kem out ’mongst the rocks an’ ye’ll find me.” Once more he held her at arm’s length and looked searchingly at her tearful face. Suddenly he mounted his horse and rode away. XXX. He did not maintain this sedulous semblance of calmness as he galloped the wild young horse along the mountain slopes in the mist. His eyes burned; his teeth were fiercely set; sometimes he lifted his right hand and shook it clenched as if he held his vengeance within his grasp and would not lightly let it go. Over and again he cried aloud a curse upon the man he hated, and then he would fall to muttering his grudges, all unforgotten, all registered indelibly in his mind despite its facile laxity, despite its fickle traits. He reviewed the events since the morning that Alethea had stood by the judge’s desk, and he laid down his pen to gaze, to the afternoon when, amongst the blossoms and the sunshine and the birds, they had talked together, and she had asked a futile thing, doubtless to beguile the hour, and he had warned her solemnly.