"Take your foot out o' that spring! Don't you mad me, Nan Bryerson!" he cried. She laughed up at him and flung him a taunt. "You don't darst to get mad, Tommy-Jeffy; _you've got religion_." It is a terrible thing to be angry in shackles. There are similes--pent volcanoes, overcharged boilers and the like--but they are all inadequate. Thomas Jefferson searched for missiles more deadly than dry twigs, found none, and fell headlong--not from the rock, but from grace. "_Damn!_" he screamed; and then, in an access of terrified remorse: "Oh, hell, hell, hell!" The girl laughed mockingly and took her foot from the pool, not in deference to his outburst, but because the water was icy cold and gave her a cramp. "Now you've done it," she remarked. "The devil'll shore get ye for sayin' that word, Tom-Jeff." There was no reply, and she stepped back to see what had become of him. He was prone, writhing in agony. She knew the way to the top of the rock, and was presently crouching beside him. "Don't take on like that!" she pleaded. "Times I cayn't he'p bein' mean: looks like I was made thataway. Get up and slap me, if you want to. I won't slap back." But Thomas Jefferson only ground his face deeper into the thick mat of cedar needles and begged to be let alone. "Go away; I don't want you to talk to me!" he groaned. "You're always making me sin!" "That's because you're Adam and I'm Eve, ain't it? Wasn't you tellin' me in revival time that Eve made all the 'ruction 'twixt the man and God? I reckon she was right sorry; don't you?" Thomas Jefferson sat up. "You're awfully wicked, Nan," he said definitively. "'Cause I don't believe all that about the woman and the snake and the apple and the man?" "You'll go to hell when you die, and then I guess you'll believe," said Thomas Jefferson, still more definitively. She took a red apple from the pocket of her ragged frock and gave it to him. "What's that for?" he asked suspiciously. "You eat it; it's the kind you like--off 'm the tree right back of Jim Stone's barn lot," she answered. "You stole it, Nan Bryerson!" "Well, what if I did? You didn't." He bit into it, and she held him in talk till it was eaten to the core. "Have you heard tell anything more about the new railroad?" she asked. Thomas Jefferson shook his head. "I heard Squire Bates and Major Dabney naming it one day last week." "Well, it's shore comin'--right thoo' Paradise. I heard tell how it was goin' to cut the old Maje's grass patch plumb in two, and run right smack thoo' you-uns' peach orchard." "Huh!" said Thomas Jefferson. "What do you reckon my father'd be doing all that time? He'd show 'em!" A far-away cry, long-drawn and penetrating, rose on the still air of the lower slope and was blown on the breeze to the summit of the great rock.