There was something passing all bounds of endurance in her patent scorn and the intensity of her anger. He realized the extent of her affliction, and his love, albeit quickly grown, was great. But his pride was an indomitable essence, and it showed in his manner as he drew himself tensely erect. “I don’t hold myself bound ter mind yer bid,” he said slowly. “I hev been in love with ye ever sence I fust set eyes on ye, but I ain’t sech ez Samson or some o’ the t’others, ez war fairly owned, body an’ soul, by some woman or other. I foller my own will, an’ it hev led me down ter my own house in Brumsaidge Cove, an’ I go up ter the mounting no mo’. I foller my own will, an’ it leads me whar the voice o’ the Sperit summons.” His eyes dilated and his color flared; his serious, half-frowning gaze was fixed upon her, but he hardly saw her as he made this valiant declaration of independence. There was dignity as well as strength in his pose and his manner, and the temerity of his resolution to be no slave to his love. His revolt, if so it might be interpreted, against the supreme power which she wielded overwhelmed her in some sort. She looked at him with a self-forgetfulness, a sort of impersonal interest, for a moment. “Yes, sir; thar I mean ter live an’ die,—in Brumsaidge,” he pursued. “An’ enny woman ez tells me ter go thar or kem hyar—’thout it air ter do some favior—mought ez well save her breath. I be man enough, I reckon, ter know my mind an’ do it,—leastwise I’ll try.” Once more he paused. The mare was straining at the reins that hampered her freedom, and he heard the rustling of the bough to which she was hitched. He gave a hasty, mechanical glance over his shoulder to make sure that she and the burden, the killed buck, were where they should be. The stirrups, swinging back and forth, touched the antlers once and again with a sharp sound; a frog was croaking on an oozy green log by the bank; Jepson’s old deerhound, an animal whose capacity for speed showed in every line of its supple body, had followed him deftly along the bridge and stood beside him, looking up with intelligent eyes, and once or twice furtively licking his boot. As Jepson turned back, he saw Marcella’s face without that expression of anger and reproach; she was for the moment absolved from her intention of hatred. He noted the lurking sadness, the haunting fear, the wistfulness that is always the sequence and attestation of some predominant emotion. She looked so tender, so young, so grievously wounded. “Oh, Marcelly,” he cried, “I never meant ter harm Eli! I wouldn’t hev hurt him fur nuthin’. I wouldn’t keer what the law would do ter me fur it, ef only ye’d b’lieve I never done it a-purpose. Ef only ye’d say that, I’d go ter jail fur the rest o’ my life rejoicin’.”