"My intentions!" faltered Hall, and then he went white and turned his face away. "Don't tell anybody!" he pleaded, clutching Meshackatee by the leg, "it would ruin our happiness forever. Oh, I was mad--insane--I should never have done it! But Meshackatee--she had thought I was dead!" "Oh, dead, eh?" rumbled Meshackatee, squinting his calculating eyes and regarding him from beneath his long hair, "well, that makes a difference, of course. She'd heard about that shooting, and the bullet-hole under your heart and----" "That's it--they told her I was dead!" "'They'?" "Yes. Her folks, and Mrs. Scarborough. She was a Randolph, you know, before her marriage; and she told Allifair I was dead." "I--see!" observed Meshackatee, nodding his head and spitting wisely, "and was you young folks engaged to git married?" "That was it--that's what caused it. We were engaged to be married, but we belonged to opposing clans. She was a Randolph, you see, and I'm a McIvor----" "Ah!" exclaimed Meshackatee, "I'm beginning to savvy. The Randolph-McIvor feud--back in Kaintuck!" "Yes, that's it," went on McIvor feverishly, "but let me explain it to you. Our families have been at war for over twenty years, and each year the feud becomes worse. It's cost the Randolph faction over four hundred dead and the McIvors over three hundred that we know of. Men are found dead in the woods, just as I was left for dead, and others are never found. All our relatives are engaged in it, and hundreds of outsiders who hardly know what they're fighting for. All they think of is free whiskey and midnight raids and a chance to get revenge on some enemy; and so it goes until the mountains are a battle-ground and men have turned to brutes. And there's no power that can stop it, neither the courts nor the militia, because we live far back in the hills; but if I could marry Allifair, then the blood-feud would be ended and the Randolphs and McIvors would be friends." "I understand," murmured Meshackatee, and sat smiling benevolently as the young man gazed off into space. "We met by accident," he went on at last, "while I was scouting in their country. But she spared my life, she did not report me, and the next time we met we were friends. She's such a gentle creature--and I had turned rough, from living out and fighting for years--but somehow she learned to love me and the dream came to both of us to marry and end the feud. I was building a cabin, far up in the hills where no one would ever find us, when a dirty little spy discovered our meeting place and the Randolphs became aware of our plans. They watched us--and the next time I went to our tree there was no one there, she was gone. They reported her dead--shot down by the McIvors, for our womenfolks make war among themselves--but I asked all our women and none of them had done it, though many of them would gladly have done so.