“I wouldn’t git in ’thout thar ’peared ter be plenty o’ elbow room,” Ike qualified. “Who’s that?” said Skimpy, suddenly. So absorbed had they been that until this moment they were not aware of a slow approach along the road behind them. The sight of a stranger was unusual, but so little curiosity do the mountaineers manifest in unknown passers-by that if the man’s manner had had no appeal to the boys, they would hardly have lifted their eyes; they would not even have stared after his back was turned. But the stranger was about to hail them. He had already lifted his hand with an awkward wave of salutation. Still he fixed his eyes upon them and did not speak as he slouched toward them, and the two boys were impressed with the conviction that he had heard every word that they had been saying. He was a tall, dawdling fellow of forty, perhaps, carrying a rifle on his shoulder, and dressed in an old brown jeans suit, ill-mended and patched here and there, and with some rents not patched at all. His hair, long and brown, streaked with gray, hung down to his collar beneath his old broad-brimmed wool hat. His face was lined and cadaverous, his features were sharp and shrewd. His eyes, bright, small, dark, and somehow not reassuring, expressed a sort of anxiety and anger that the boys could not comprehend. There came along the road after him, plainly defined on the summit of the great bluffs, between the woods and the sunset sky, with the river in the abyss beneath and a gleaming star in the haze above, a grotesque little cart, the wheels creaking dismally with every revolution and filling the air with the odor of tar and wagon grease. A lean scraggy ox was between the shafts; a cow shambled along at the tail-board; a calf and two or three dogs trotted further in the rear. The man was moving, evidently, for the poverty-stricken aspect of the vehicle was accented by the meagre show of household utensils—frying-pan, oven, skillet, spinning-wheel—and the bedding, and two or three chairs with which it was laden. On top of it all, sitting in a snug nest of quilts, with a wealth of long yellow hair, tousled and curling upon her shoulders, was a little girl, four or five years old. Her infantile beauty had naught in common with his down-looking, doubtful, careworn face, but she fixed the two boys with a pair of grave, urgent, warning gray eyes, which intimated that whatever the man might do or say he had a small but earnest backer. And though the autumn leaves were red and yellow above her head, the roses of spring bloomed on her cheek, and its sunshine was tangled in her hair; all its buoyant joys were in her laugh when she chose to be merry, and her smile brightened the world for him and for her. She was at the threshold of her life—likely to be a poor thing enough and hedged with limitations, but it had space for all the throbs of living, for all there is of bliss and woe. The man glanced back at her as he spoke.