This was the place which Dave Cabarreux's father had given him years ago, and which she had heard he was going to work next spring. He would be drudging here while she was in the North, thinking of her as he ploughed: she knew that. But she would be gone for ever. It would be all over then. Isabel stopped the mule, and sat with her hands clasped on her knees, looking at the meadow and the desolate closed house. It was nobly done in David to give himself up to hard work. Her heart beat as high with pride as if he had been the first man who ever undertook at a late day to earn his living. She had heard in town that he had been down looking at the place the day before. Perhaps he had walked over that very meadow. She leaned forward: the ground was soft: surely there were the marks of footsteps. Only yesterday! Isabel glanced quickly around--at the lonely road, the mighty hills that shut her in, swathed in forest, shouldering the clouds, the gray mist creeping through the gorge. An eagle swept across the opening overhead, frogs croaked in the swamp yonder: there were no other living things to see her. She sprang from the wagon, ran across the meadow, put her foot in the deep print: her bosom heaved, the tears came to her eyes. Isabel was not a sentimental, silly girl, but a shrewd, hard-working woman. She had not seen her lover for a long time, and she thought it would be years before she would see him again. She walked down to the river--sat down under a walnut tree. Surely she might rest there a minute. She would never see David's home again. A tall, dark man gathered himself up from among the deep fern, watching her breathlessly. Was it possible that she cared to walk over the land because it was _his_ land? No: she was too cold-blooded a little thing for that. "Miss Isabel!" She sprang to her feet. It was he! Then she spoke coolly, precisely as if they had met on the street in Sevier: "How did you come here, Mr. Cabarreux? I thought there was nobody but myself in this valley." Young Cabarreux stood leaning over her, his hat in his hand: "The truth is, I was asleep by the branch thar. I came out to look into the quality of the soil this mornin', but I took a rest instead: I'll have enough of work hyar next year." "Yes, you will," with a little sigh, and a quick glance of pity at the well-knit, handsome figure. Cabarreux colored high and hesitated: "You--you knew it was my land, then, Miss Isabel? When you stopped?" He bent so close that she could feel his breath stir her hair. What could she say? She had never let him know that she cared for him so much as that. She gave a frightened glance at the face above her, the mellow olive complexion, the laughing mouth, the dark, liquid eyes. It seemed to her that one of the early gods might have had such a face. "I had heard--I thought you had a farm in this valley," she faltered, moving away.