The influence was Minerva, and the boy found himself, as the splendid fall died swiftly into the unspeakable desolation of a mountain winter, counting the days between her visits to the cabin. But of this he said nothing, and the only evidences he gave to her at first were mute evidences, and a greater ferocity in suppressing the spirit of nagging and persecution to which his mother and sister drifted with inevitable perversity. When the girl returned at Christmas, after a longer absence than usual, she found, to her astonishment, the contour of the cabin altered. Newt had thrown against one end an additional room. It was a simple annex of hewn logs and puncheon floor with a clay-daubed chimney and no windows, but it was tight-chinked and solidly weather-tight. When she asked about it, her step-mother sniffed contemptuously that it was some of "Newty's foolishness." Later, when the boy himself came in and saw her sitting with the family circle before the fire in the main cabin, he shuffled his feet clumsily, and seemed unwilling to meet her eyes. A great embarrassment was on him and he was more diffident in her presence than he had ever been before. The girl saw it and wondered, and, when she could do so without attracting too much attention, she found an opportunity to lead him outside. "M'nervy," the boy said shortly, when they were alone, "sence ye've been a-consortin' with them-thar fotched-on teachers at the school, hit seems like ye hain't got much use fer us plain folks. I reckon ye're right-smart ashamed ter acknowledge ter them folks who yore kin air." "Oh, Newty!" she exclaimed, with a world of surprise and reproach in her voice. Her face flamed hotly; for, to the mountain idea, disloyalty to "kith and kin" is the most unpardonable of offenses. It was the first time she had ever called him Newty. They were standing out in the icy air of the door-yard. Inside the main cabin, the family huddled before the fire, as uncommunicative as cattle. The pall of the black squalor had been tightening about the girl's heart like an impalpable constrictor and almost strangling it. Outside, the bitter wind lashed her calico skirt about her slim ankles, and cut like a knife. The boy, who wore no overcoat, stamped his feet, and thrust his chapped and reddened hands into his threadbare pockets. "Oh, Newty," she expostulated again indignantly, "I thought ye knew me better then ter accuse me of bein' ashamed of my own folks!"