They paused beside a rail fence inclosing one of the cabins, where the flare of firelight flickered out into the passage between the two rooms. Marcella’s face had become only a vague suggestion, white in the closing dusk, as they stood together a moment at the gate. For she had spoken at last, offering the customary invitation to come in and stay to supper. “I mus’ be a-travelin’ up the mounting,” he drawled in response. Then he hesitated. “This air the fust time I ever seen ye, but I reckon ’twon’t be the las’.” He strode off then, and she watched him as he went with his assured gait and singularly erect pose. A deft, swift step he had, too, and she was presently gazing into the closing obscurity where he had disappeared. “I’d jes’ ez lief ’twould be the las’,” she said to herself,—“I’d jes’ ez lief.” IV. Locked in the stony grasp of the mountains was Broomsedge Cove. Rugged with sudden deep depressions and abrupt declivities, heavily wooded here and anon broken by crags and defying cultivation, this limited basin was all unlike the neighboring coves, those fair nooks of the ranges, fertile and smiling, and level as a floor. The road, dry in summer, was the bed of a stream in winter, and the denizens of Broomsedge then cared little to rove abroad. Certain stretches of abandoned land, once cultivated, had given the place its name, and down their slopes flourished the graceless broomsedge,—pest, poverty-bitten, blight. It seemed to seek the manner of the worthier growths, to bear itself like wheat, or rye, or oats; it wore the semblance of a crop, as it shared with them the bounty of the sun and the benediction of the rain. It waved in the wind, half defiant, half forlorn. Wherever it encroached upon the fields, the grace of utility and the guerdon of labor were gone, and this flout of nature, this perversity of herbage, prospered unwelcome in their stead. But Broomsedge Cove could still boast a considerable acreage of grain, fair and thrifty enough, the unripe green tint contrasting with the red-brown tones of the sedge.