The mother gave the same answer as had Mavis, but she looked anxious and worried. "Mavis is a-goin' back to the mountains with me," said the boy, and the girl looked up in defiant expectation, but the mother did not even look around from the stove. "Mebbe yo' pap won't let ye," she said quietly. "How's he goin' to help hisself," asked the girl, "when he ain't hyeh?" "He'll blame me fer it, but I ain't a-blamin' you." The words surprised and puzzled both and touched both with sympathy and a little shame. The mother looked at her son, opened her lips again, but closed them with a glance at Mavis that made her go out and leave them alone. "Jasie," she said then, "I reckon when Babe was a-playin' 'possum in the bushes that day, he could 'a' shot ye when you run down the hill." She took his silence for assent and went on: "That shows he don't hold no grudge agin you fer shootin' at him." Still Jason was silent, and a line of stern justice straightened the woman's lips. "I hain't got no right to say a word, just because Babe air my own brother. Mebbe Babe knows who the man was, but I don't believe Babe done it. Hit hain't enough that he was jes' SEED a-comin' outen the bushes, an' afore you go a-layin' fer Babe, all I axe ye is to make PLUMB DEAD SHORE." It was a strange new note to come from his mother's voice, and it kept the boy still silent from helplessness and shame. She had spoken calmly, but now there was a little break in her voice. "I want ye to go back, an' I'd go blind fer the rest o' my days if that land was yours an' was a-waitin' down thar fer ye." From the next room came the sound of Mavis's restless feet, and the boy rose. "I hain't a-goin' to lay fer Babe, mammy," he said huskily; "I hain't a-goin' to lay fer nobody--now. An' don't you worry no more about that land." Half an hour later, just when day was breaking, Mavis sat behind Jason with her bundle in her lap, and the mother looked up at them. "I wish I was a-goin' with ye," she said. And when they had passed out of sight down the lane, she turned back into the house--weeping. XIV Little Mavis did not reach the hills. At sunrise a few miles down the road, the two met Steve Hawn on a borrowed horse, his pistol buckled around him and his face pale and sleepless. "Whar you two goin'?" he asked roughly. "Home," was Jason's short answer, and he felt Mavis's arm about his waist begin to tremble. "Git off, Mavis, an' git up hyeh behind me. Yo' home's with me." Jason valiantly reached for his gun, but Mavis caught his hand and, holding it, slipped to the ground. "Don't, Jasie--I'll come, pap, I'll come." Whereat Steve laughed and Jason, raging, saw her ride away behind her step-father, clutching him about the waist with one arm and with the other bent over her eyes to shield her tears.