It had been practicable to come to a pause at some little distance from the two, for their voices carried a long way through the tranquil wilderness night. Behind her and up the hill the frogs were croaking at the spring. Their horse-fiddling ceased abruptly, as if they had been suddenly disturbed, and it was not immediately continued. Trained to read a meaning in Nature's signs, she wondered at this; then presently she heard a stealthy step between her and the spring. Lifting her head and shoulders above the fronded plants, she saw a dark, crouched shape approaching warily. Some one had walked past the spring and disturbed the croaking choir. She ducked low and waited breathlessly, hoping that this second would-be eavesdropper, whoever he might be, would not come upon her engaged in a like pursuit. At the same time she was trying to hear what Selden was saying to Oliver Drew. It seemed from Old Adam's slightly hesitating manner that he was as yet not well launched on the subject that had caused him to pilot Oliver to this lonely spot. He said: "I reckon they told ye ye wouldn't be welcome down on the Old Ivison Place. Didn't some of 'em say, now, that a gang called the Poison Oakers might try to drive ye out?--if I'm not too bold in askin'." "Yes," said the voice of Oliver Drew. "Uh-huh! I thought as much. Well, Mr. Drew, ye got to make allowances for ol'-timers in the hills. We get set in our ways, as the fella says; and I reckon we _don't_ like outsiders to come in any too well. "But anybody with any savvy oughta know its different in a case like yours. Why, what little feed we'd get offen your little piece, if you wasn't there, wouldn't amount to the price of a saddle string. It was plumb loco for any one to tell ye we'd raise a rumpus 'bout ye bein' down there." "I thought about the same," observed Oliver Drew quietly. There came a distinct pause in the dialogue. Once more Jessamy straightened her arms and pushed head and shoulders above the ferns. The person who had disturbed the frogs was nowhere to be seen. He too, perhaps, had taken up a lizardlike progress through the ferns, and was now listening to all that was being said by Oliver and Selden. She flattened herself again, and held one hand behind her ear to catch every word. "Yes, sir, plumb loco," Old Man Selden reiterated. "And they ain't no reason on earth why you and us can't be the best o' friends. That's what we oughta be, seein' we're pretty near neighbours." "I'm sure I'm perfectly willing to be friendly, Mr. Selden." "Course ye are. Just so! An' so are we. And listen here, Mr. Drew: Don't ye put too much stock in that there Poison Oaker racket." "I don't know that I understand that."