The boy's thoughts rushed back upon him with a picture that forbade contemplation--a barren, dismal prospect--a measure of life that did not embrace Belle-Ann. He would choose death, he told himself, rather than gain and mislead her. Even had he sought to, he knew he could not withstand his own lie to her. She whose limpid, steadfast, child-eyes could read every line that crossed his soul--every thought that passed his eyes. He knew a lie would sheathe itself in its own being. In his extremity, he stalked madly about the confines of this moon-touched mount. His perturbation waxed to a volcanic upheaval that now inflicted a physical pain. To him it was as if these two conflicting forces had confiscated his corporal structure for a ravaging melee, augmented by two combative rivals struggling in his own heart. His mad love for Belle-Ann--his blind adherence and faith in the code-honor of his hillman lineage. That there was something amiss in this faith his mind could not deny but, oddly enough, his heart hotly rejected it all, stirring him to mad, reckless action. Belle-Ann filled up the whole of Lem's wild, humble life. Without her the future held no hope. Without hope he wanted to die. His vain effort to dislodge the scourge within his soul, goaded him to maniacal thoughts. Then, in an unlooked-for instant, an awful wrong shaped itself to a determination. He would hurl his tortured self over the cliff. He told himself that he was not fearful of the fall. In proof thereof, he rushed to the jagged brink of the ledge and looked down into hazy moonlit space and was unafraid. With a desperate movement he snatched his hat off and cast it down at his feet. His toes inched over the abyss in his aberration. He gathered a long breath. His knees bent to the leap. His heels raised slowly under him; when in this instant a memory dashed upon him, and he straightened and stiffened, electrified. The thought of Caleb Peevy rived into his muddled, benumbed mind. Caleb Peevy, who had jumped wilfully off Henhawk's Knob into Hellsfork three years since, and had gone to hell, so they said. A check of repugnance swept him as he recalled the lasting scorn and contempt of the mountain folk, and the epithet of coward--coward that followed Peevy past the grave with its two-edged stigma that linked, inseparably, to his memory to-night. Lem drew back, stung with self-shame. A hope drifted back into his distraught breast. He looked upward into the astral sky for God's guiding star that Maw Lutts had shown to him. All a-quiver, he watched for the flambeau of Belle-Ann's pious prophecy: "Know ye the truth and the truth shall make ye free!" A divine revelation ebbed across his chaotic senses.