And, such is the value of the patriarchal edict, the tumult was promptly stilled. Yet the head of the house, himself, could not so readily dismiss a realization of the unwonted pallor on cheeks normally soft and rosily colourful. The eyes were undeniably wretched and deeply ringed. To himself Cyrus said, "They've jest only done had a lovers' quarrel. Young folks is bound ter foller fallin' out as well as fallin' in, I reckon." Neither that day nor the next, however, did the girl "live right up to her name," and on the following night Boone did not come over to sue for peace, as a lover should, under such April conditions of sun and storm. "What does ye reckon's done come over 'em, Maw?" the father eventually inquired, and the mother shook her perplexed head. The two of them were alone on the porch just then, save for one of the youngest children, who was deeply absorbed with the feeding of a small and crippled lamb from a nursing bottle improvised out of a whiskey flask. Slowly the old man's face clouded, until it wore so forebodingly sombre a look as the wife had not seen upon it since years before when life had run black. Then, despite all his efforts to "consort peaceful with mankind," he had been drawn into an enmity with a fatal termination. Cyrus had on that occasion been warned that he was to be "lay-wayed" and, as he had taken down his rifle from the wall, his eyes had held just the same hard and obdurate glint that lingered in them now. The woman, remembering that time long gone, when her husband had refused to turn a step aside from his contemplated journey, shuddered a little. She could not forget how he had been shot out of his saddle and how he had, while lying wounded in the creek-bed road, punished his assailant with death. He was wounded now, though not with a bullet this time, and his scowl said that he would hit back. "What air hit, Paw?" she demanded, and his reply came in slow but implacable evenness: "I've done set a heap of store by Boone Wellver. I've done thought of him like a son of my own--but ef he's broke my gal's heart--an's she's got ther look of hit in her eyes--him an' me kain't both go on dwellin' along ther same creek." He paused a moment there, and in his final words sounded an even more inflexible ring: "We kain't both go on livin' hyar--an' I don't aim ter move." "Paw"--the plea came solicitously from a fear-burdened heart--"we've just got ter wait an' see." "I don't aim ter be over-hasty," he reassured her, with a rude sort of gentleness, "but nuther does I aim ter endure hit--ef so be hit's true." But that evening at twilight when Boone crossed the stile, if the nod which greeted him was less cordial than custom had led him to expect, at least Cyrus spoke no hostile word. The old man was "biding his time," and as he rose and knocked the nub of ash out of his pipe-bowl, he announced curtly, "I'll tell Happy ye're hyar." CHAPTER XXIII