She plunged her face deep in the cool spring, and raised it to shake back her hair, until the water flew from its masses. She laughed again, because it was another day, and because she was alive. She waded about for a while where the spring joined the creek, and delightedly watched the schools of tiny, almost transparent, minnows that darted away at her coming. Then, standing on a rock, she paused with her head bent, and listened until her ears caught the faint tinkle of a cowbell, which she recognized. Nodding her head joyously, she went off into the woods, to emerge at the end of a half-hour later, carrying a pail of milk, and smiling joyously again--because it was almost breakfast time. But, before going home, she set down her bucket by the stream, and, with a quick glance toward the house to make sure that she was not observed, climbed through the brush, and was lost to view. She followed a path that her own feet had made, and after a steep course upward, came upon a bald face of rock, which stood out storm-battered where a rift went through the backbone of the ridge. This point of vantage commanded the other valley. From its edge, a white oak, dwarfed, but patriarchal, leaned out over an abrupt drop. No more sweeping or splendid view could be had within miles, but it was not for any reason so general that Sally had made her pilgrimage. Down below, across the treetops, were a roof and a chimney from which a thread of smoke rose in an attenuated shaft. That was Spicer South's house, and Samson's home. The girl leaned against the gnarled bowl of the white oak, and waved toward the roof and chimney. She cupped her hands, and raised them to her lips like one who means to shout across a great distance, then she whispered so low that only she herself could hear: "Hello, Samson South!" She stood for a space looking down, and forgot to laugh, while her eyes grew religiously and softly deep, then, turning, she ran down the slope. She had performed her morning devotions. That day at the house of Spicer South was an off day. The kinsmen who had stopped for the night stayed on through the morning. Nothing was said of the possibility of trouble. The men talked crops, and tossed horseshoes in the yard; but no one went to work in the fields, and all remained within easy call. Only young Tamarack Spicer, a raw-boned nephew, wore a sullen face, and made a great show of cleaning his rifle and pistol. He even went out in the morning, and practised at target -shooting, and Lescott, who was still very pale and weak, but able to wander about at will, gained the impression that in young Tamarack he was seeing the true type of the mountain "bad-man." Tamarack seemed willing to feed that idea, and admitted apart to Lescott that, while he obeyed the dictates of the truce, he found them galling, and was straining at his leash. "I don't take nothin' offen nobody," he sullenly confided. "The Hollmans gives me my half the road."