The young man listened. Then a smile of satisfaction lit his homely face, for from somewhere down in the tangle of the creek banks, one of its own kind was answering the call. The hidden singer in the clearing called again, even throwing more life and gladness into the song. Again the answer came from the unseen one of like kind, a little closer now. They were moving toward each other. The silent listener had not made a study of birds. Yet now he was quite sure that somewhere they would meet in the wide expanse of over-laced branches and would mate. Again his mind went back to the singer of the bluff--and her challenging call. Who or what manner of woman was she? He wondered. When the man who had been snoring awoke with the first streaks of day, the ringing of an ax sounded on his ear. "If he don't beat anything to bite them trees down and eat them up, I'm a liar. He must have been at it all night." "He needs breeches--needs them powerful bad," his wife replied. "Must want to go a courtin'," was his comment. "Courtin' or no courtin', he'll be ketched by the sheriff if he don't git some new breeches right soon. His is fixin' to leave him. I'm skeered every time he jumps over the fence." CHAPTER V SWAPPING HOSSES Not more than a fortnight after Windy Batts had been weighed in the balance by the Clary Grove boys, Mrs. Mirandy Benson ran over to Rutledge's to discuss a few news items. Mrs. Benson was Phoebe Jane Benson's mother. Phoebe Jane Benson had never been kissed by a human man--her mother the authority for the statement. "No start, no finish," was Mrs. Benson's oft-quoted statement as touching the delicate question of the preservation of female virtue. "For this reason, Mis' Rutledge, I'm dead set against huggin'. There's never no tellin' where huggin' will end, and Phoebe Jane shan't get no opportunity." But it was not of hugging that she now talked. "Mis' Rutledge," she said, "Windy Batts has been dipped and is going to set out preachin' for the Hard Shells and will hold a meetin' near New Salem. It's set to his credit, I say, that he chose to unite with the Hard Shells instead of the Clary Grove gang. Since Windy Batts has been keepin' company with Phoebe Jane, I've been uncommon interested. He has a powerful flow of language, and will make a famous exhorter." A second topic of conversation was the tall clerk who was in charge of the new store opened by Offutt. "He's the one that helped Mentor Graham election day and has been chopping rails since on Turtle Ford.