“I hev no call ter gin account o’ sech ez I do ter you-uns,” he said, with that serene arrogance which she had always felt was intolerable, and which she had in vain sought to reduce. “I’d hev been mighty pleased ef ye hed thunk well o’ my deeds an’ could hev put enny dependence in me, but ef ye don’t, it don’t make me think no ill o’ myself nor my aims. I ain’t got two faces, ter turn this one, an’ ef ye don’t like its looks, turn that one. I be led by sech light ez the Sperit hev revealed ter me, an’ I don’t ax ye nor enny other human ter show me the way an’ guide my feet.” He paused, looking reflectively at the broomsedge waving about his high boots; then he recommenced suddenly. “Bein’ ez ye hev got a interus’ in the man ez tole ye I war a captain o’ a gang o’ lynchers, ye hed better warn him not ter let his jaw wag too slack,—not about _me_; I ain’t keerin’ what he say ’bout _me_, but them t’ other men mought hear o’ his talkin’ too free, an’ I ain’t round about the Settle_mint_ much, an’ couldn’t hender ’em ef they war ter set out ter do him a damage. Tell him that. They air powerful outdone with me ennyhow, kase I wouldn’t gin my cornsent ter sech ez they wanted that night he kem ter the forge.” Marcella hardly breathed, so strong upon her was the terror of jeopardizing the safety of Rathburn. “How do ye know who tole me?” she demanded, gazing up at him with a feint of defiance in her contracted eyebrows and curling lip. “Ye may be talkin’ ’bout one man, an’ me ’bout another.” He looked straight into the clear depths of her eyes. They faltered suddenly, and the long lashes fell as he said,— “Naw, we be both talkin’ ’bout’n that Doctor Rathburn, ez he calls hisse’f,—that be who we air talkin’ ’bout.” She leaned back silently against a rugged bowlder amongst the outcropping ledges, the gourd, empty now, the neck of it still in her listless hand, lying beside her on the trampled broomsedge. Her greenish-brown dress was much like the mosses in the fissures of the gray rock, against the cold monotone of which her fair young face seemed so delicately and finely tinted. The flock had scattered, feeding amongst the brambles and on tufts of grass that seemed, beneath the fallen leaves, to have escaped the frost. The sheep that had worn the hat rid himself of it at last, and looked on stupidly when the little mountaineer, with an agile elasticity of gait incongruous with his infantile rotundity, ran out and triumphantly crowned another, slipping back to his seat beside Marcella, and attracting no notice save from the placid flock, pausing to gaze in mild-eyed wonder. “I ain’t lookin’ ter see that man agin,” said Marcella, her eyes fixed on the summits across the broad valley. “I can’t tell him.” She paused, in the hope that he might ask if she had not seen him lately, but Jepson could be betrayed into no unseemly show of curiosity, and she was presently fain to continue.