"I'm that glad all at once. I don't know why. If the mountains could feel and be glad, seems like they'd be laughing now away off there by the sea. I wonder will I ever see the ocean." "Of course you will. You are not going to live always shut up in these mountains. Laugh again. Let me hear you." But she turned on him startled eyes. "I clean forgot that poor man down below, so like to die I am 'most afraid to get back there. Look down. It must have been in a place like that where Christian slew Apollyon in the dark valley, like I was reading to Hoyle last night." "Does he live down in there? I mean the man Irwin--not Apollyon. He's dead, for Christian slew him." "Yes, the Irwins live there. See yonder that spot of cleared red ground? There's their place. The house is hid by the dark trees nigh the red spot. Can you make it out?" "Yes, but I call that far." "It's easy riding. Shall we go on? I'm that frightened--we'd better hurry." "Is that your way when you are afraid to do a thing; you hurry to do it all the more?" "Seems like we have to a heap of times. Seems like if I were only a man, I could be brave, but being a girl so, it is right hard." She started her horse to a gallop, and side by side they hurried over the level top of the ridge--to Thryng an exhilarating moment, to her a speeding toward some terrible, unknown trial. CHAPTER X IN WHICH CASSANDRA AND DAVID VISIT THE HOME OF DECATUR IRWIN Soon the way became steep and difficult and the path so narrow they were forced to go single file. Then Cassandra led and David followed. They passed no dwellings, and even the little home to which they were going was lost to view. He wondered if she were not weary, remembering that she had been over the distance twice before that day, and begged her, as he had done when they set out, to allow him to carry the basket, but still she would not. "I never think of it. I often carry things this way.--We have to here in the mountains." She glanced back at him and smiled. "I reckon you find it hard because you are not used to living like we do; we're soon there now, see yonder?" A turn in the path brought them in sight of the cabin, set in its bare, desolate patch of red soil. About the door swarmed unkempt children of all sizes, as bees hang out of an over-filled hive, the largest not more than twelve years old, and the youngest carried on the mother's arm. It was David's first visit to one of the poorest of the mountain homes, and he surveyed the scene before him with dismay.