hand had the stranger boy by his thick hair and Mavis, feeling her own arm clutched by the stranger-girl, let go and turned on her like a fury. There was a piercing scream from Marjorie, hurried footsteps answered on the porch, and old Jason and the colonel looked with bewildered eyes on the little Blue-grass girl amazed, indignant, white with horror; Mavis shrinking away from her as though she were the one who had been threatened with a blow; the stranger lad with a bitten thumb clinched in the hollow of one hand, his face already reddening with contrition and shame; and savage little Jason biting a bloody lip and with the lust of battle still shaking him from head to foot. "Jason," said the old man sternly, "whut's the matter out hyeh?" Marjorie pointed one finger at Mavis, started to speak, and stopped. Jason's eyes fell. "Nothin'," he said sullenly, and Colonel Pendleton looked to his son with astonished inquiry, and the lad's fine face turned bewildered and foolish. "I don't know, sir," he said at last. "Don't know?" echoed the colonel. "Well--" The old man broke in: "Jason, if you have lost yo' manners an' don't know how to behave when thar's strangers around, I reckon you'd better go on home." The boy did not lift his eyes. "I was a-goin' home anyhow," he said, still sullen, and he turned. "Oh, no!" said the colonel quickly; "this won't do. Come now--you two boys shake hands." At once the stranger lad walked forward to his enemy, and confused Jason gave him a limp hand. The old man laughed. "Come on in, Jason--you an' Mavis--an' stay to supper." The boy shook his head. "I got to be gittin' back home," he said, and without a word more he turned again. Marjorie looked toward the little girl, but she, too, was starting. "I better be gittin' back too," she said shyly, and off she ran. Old Jason laughed again. "Jes' like two young roosters out thar in my barnyard," and he turned with the colonel toward the house. But Marjorie and her cousin stood in the porch and watched the two little mountaineers until, without once looking back, they passed over the sunlit hill. IV