Callista removed her gaze from the far sky line [288] and brought it down to her young brother-in-law. Now indeed her smile was wintry, even bitter. "The man you named, Sylvane," she said explicitly, "has no notion of carin' what becomes of this child. Now that you've brought this up, I'll say to you what I haven't said to any other: it was this that caused me to quit Lance. You' right, I did leave the house in there for fear you should speak to me--and speak of him. If I could be sure that I'd never hear his name again, I'd be better suited. I reckon you'll have to promise not to bring this up again, or they'll sure get to be hard feelings between you and me." Sylvane dropped back with a face of consternation, his hand fell away from her arm. He reached up and drew the boy down, so that the small, fair face was against his breast. "Sis' Callie," he began incredulously, "I cain't believe it. Buddy's got quare ways, but them that loves him can understand. His own son--! Why, ef the chap was mine--" He broke off, and stood a moment in silence. "The meanest man there is, looks like to me, ort to be glad to do for his own child." The words were not so strange on the lips of the tall seventeen-year-old boy with the child's eyes, since in mountain communities youths little older are often husbands and fathers. "Well, air you going to promise me never to name it again?" demanded Callista, an almost [289] querulous edge to her voice. Sylvane's resemblance to his brother, some gnawing knowledge of injustice toward the absent Lance, wrought upon her mood intolerably. "No, I'll never name Buddy to you again," said Sylvane soberly. "If you and me ever talks of him, you'll have to mention it first. But if there is anything I can do for you, Sis' Callie, you know you have but to ask." "I know that, Sylvane," Callista assured him, with a certain eagerness in her tone. "And they is something--something that I reckon nobody could do as well as you could. I need--I just have obliged to get my things from--from up yon in the Gap. Would you go fetch 'em for me, Brother?" Sylvane, after all, was kin to Lance. He could not keep down a little thrill of pride, that his brother had thus far forced Callista's hand. But he answered gravely--almost sadly, "I'll go this day, if you say so." Securing permission from Ajax to absent himself, the boy hitched his old mule to the buckboard and hurried off to the home at the head of Lance's Laurel. Whether or not he found all of Callista's belongings packed and ready, what was said between the two men, no one knew. He returned near nightfall with Callista's trunk and one or two sizable bundles, while Spotty meekly led roped to the rear axle of the buckboard. Callista [290] helped him into her cabin with the bundles; but when he would have untied Spotty she remonstrated. "I surely thought you were fixing to take the cow over to yo' house," she said shortly. "It doesn't belong here."