Granny Wolfe had signally failed to soften her son, Old Buck. She had talked to him until she was hoarse, now pleading, now threatening him, now browbeating him with her sharp and ready tongue. Several times he had walked off to keep from hearing her; twice he had seized his fiddle and gone to playing "Buffalo Gals" wildly to shut her up. But her spirits were not so low this morning. She had put on her red flannel petticoat wrong side out by mistake, and that certainly meant better luck in the future. It was a sign that never failed. She had gone out, with her little black dog at her heels, to weed a bed of sky-colored ragged-robins. Her gaze sought out the not far distant family burying-ground instead. That which she saw caused her to drop her sourwood staff and step on her little dog's foot. "Wag, ye black devil!" she creaked in response to the canine howl. She recovered her staff, took her clay pipe from her almost toothless jaws, shaded her eyes with one hand, and looked toward the side of the Blackfern again. That which she had seen before had become an indistinct blur. "I wonder what!" she muttered. The eyes of Old Buck Wolfe were keener. He threw a last clod at a marauding hen, snatched up his always ready rifle, and hurried toward the mountain. As he passed his mother's cabin, she hailed him shrilly, "Wait thar, and I'll go 'long wi' ye!" He didn't even turn his head. "You'd ort to be skun alive!" and she limped after him, Wag following at her heels. * * * * * Colonel Mason looked for water with which to revive Tot and, it being unfamiliar territory to him, failed to find any. Wondering whether he could mount unassisted with the young woman in his arms, he went back to his horse. Then he saw, standing less than two rods away, as motionless as the trees about him, the bearded, hard-eyed, giant mountaineer, Old Buck Wolfe. "You're a terrible man, Buck," the colonel observed bitingly. Wolfe changed not one feature. "Will you be so kind, sir," and the old Southerner's voice was now not so cold, "as to hold this girl until I can get on my horse, and then pass her up to me?" [Illustration] Still no word, no move, from the hillman. His mother arrived, panting heavily. She went straight to Colonel Mason. A great deal was plain to her already. "Le' me take keer o' Tot," she said, fumbling at the bandana corners that were knotted under her chin, "ontel you can chase out the mountain thar about half a quarter and wet this here handkercher in a little spring ye'll find. Hey?" The colonel returned not long afterward with the bandana soaking wet. Tot opened her eyes the moment the water touched her face. Granny Wolfe smiled, swept the matted and tangled hair back from the high, smooth brow and crooned: