"Well, ef ye won't, ye won't" he said resignedly. "But ef you ever change yo' mind, Callisty--remember that Cindy and me is both a-waitin' for ye." And with this daring and enigmatic speech, he wheeled the sorrel and rode away, the little black's light feet pattering after the clumsier animal. [237] CHAPTER XVI. LANCE CLEAVERAGE'S SON. SUMMER lasted far into fall that year, its procession of long, fair, dreamful days like a strand of sumptuous beads. At the last of November came a dash of rain, frost, and again long, warm days, with the mist hanging blue in the valleys as though the camp-fires of autumn smoked in their blaze of scarlet and gold, their shadows of ochre and umber. "But we're goin' to ketch it for this here," Roxy Griever kept saying pessimistically. "Bound to git about so much cold in every year, and ef you have summer time mighty nigh on up to Christmas, hit'll freeze yo' toes when it does come." Callista held to her resolution to send no message to the sawmill on North Caney. But the family had debated the matter, consulting with Lance himself, and agreeing to summon him home, if possible, in ample season. At his sister's gloomy weather predictions, Sylvane grew uneasy lest the time arrive and Lance be storm-stayed in Dagget's camp. He almost resolved to go and fetch him at once, and run the chance of good coming from it. But the spell of pleasant weather and a press of work put it out of his mind. Then came a [235] day when the sun rose over low-lying clouds into a fleece of cirri that caught aflame with his mounting. The atmosphere thickened slowly hour by hour into a chill mist that, toward evening, became a drizzle. "This here's only the beginning of worse," said Kimbro at the supper table. "Looks to me like we're done with Fall. To-morrow is the first day o' winter--and you'll see it will be winter sure enough." At dawn next morning the wind rose, threshing the woods with whips of stringing rain. Stock about the lean little farms began to huddle into shelter. Belated workers at tasks which should have been laid by, found it hard to make head against the wild weather. The men at the sawmill kindled a wonderful radiance of hickory fire in the great chimney which Lance had built more to relieve his own restlessness than with any thought of their comfort. "Why, consarn yo' time!" Blev Straley deprecated as he edged toward it. "A man cain't set clost enough to that thar fire to spit in hit!"