“That’s enough,” she drawled presently, moderating their energies; “the calf’ll git out ef ye take down enny mo’. The cow kin step over sech ez be left.” The faint clanging of cow-bells stirred the air. The little house on the rise at one side was darkly brown against the irradiated mountains seen in the narrow vista of the gap. The martins fluttered from the pendulous gourds and circled about the chimneys, and were gone again. The sky cast its bright gold about the Hollow, on the tow heads of the barefoot children, and multiplied the shimmers in the swirls of the stream. Alethea looked once more toward it, hearing again the far-off lowing. A sudden movement attracted her eye. Against the great hollow whitened tree a man was leaning, whittling a stick with a clasp-knife, and now and then furtively eying her. For a moment she did not move a muscle. The color surged into her face, and receded, leaving it paler than before. A belated humming-bird, its breast a glistening green, beat the air with its multiplied suggestions of gauzy wings close to her golden head, and was gone like a flash. The children babbled on. Tige was afraid of a stick which L’onidas had brought to keep off the calf while the cow was milked, and he yelped before he was struck, without prejudice to yelping afterward. The man presently drew himself erect, closed his knife with a snap, and walked up slowly toward the fence. “Howdy?” he said, as he came. She leaned one elbow on the rails, and with the other hand she held the empty piggin. She only nodded in return. He had an embarrassed, deprecatory manner. He was tall and lank, and clumsy of gait. He had an indifferent, good-natured expression, incongruous with the gleam of anxiety in his eye. His face was almost covered by a long, straggling brown beard. “What made ye run off so t’other night down yander ter Boke’s Spring? I hed a word ter say ter ye.” “I war sorry I seen ye.” He fixed a keen look upon her. “What fur?” “I didn’t want ter know who ’twar a-moonshinin’,” she said. “Waal, ye air the only one,” he declared. He looked about him dubiously. “I ain’t keerin’ none,” he added. “Me an’ yer mother war kin somehow; I disremember how, edzac’ly—through the Scruggses, I reckon. Ef she war alive she’d gin ye the word ez she air kin ter Sam Marvin, sure. Nobody ain’t ’spicioned nuthin’ ’bout moonshinin’ but you-uns, ’cept them ez be in it.” He put his hands in his pockets and leaned against the fence. The clanking of the cow-bell was nearer. The little calf bleated, and thrust its soft head over the bars.