"Hit air," returned his sister, the dignity of a high resolve in her brief response. "Why, daughter, I think I wouldn't send that," Kimbro deprecated, drawing close in the obscurity. "Of course it's a mighty improvin' thing, but I doubt if Lance has the opportunities to take care of it that a body ought to have to [356] handle such. Don't send it, Roxana. Without doubt it would do him good, if he was whar he could make use of it." Roxy did not move to receive the bundle which her brother hesitatingly offered back to her. "I know hit ain't much account," she said disconsolately. "But I 'lowed hit might make him--maybe he'd laugh at it, and hit would cheer him up a leetle. He used to laugh powerful at some of 'em. I've put in my good shears and that Turkey-red calicker, and you tell him, Sylvane, that I want him to cut me out them little davils he was a-talkin' about, as many of 'em as hit'll make." She looked pathetically from one to the other. "There ain't nothin' like gittin' a man person that's in trouble intrusted in something. You git him intrusted in cuttin' out davils for my gospel quilt, won't you, Sylvane, honey?--or you do it, Sis' Callie. Maybe hit might make him laugh--po' Buddy, away off to hisself in some old hideout, an' nary soul to--to--an' the sheriff chasin' him like he's a wolf!" And Callista, wiser than the men, knowing that the gospel quilt would take its own message to Lance, stretched out a hand for the package. [357] CHAPTER XXVII. IN HIDING. IN the skull-shaped pocket--which was the inner chamber of the cave where Lance lay, was neither light nor life. They were the bare ribs of the mountain that arched above him in that place, blackish, misshapen, grisly in an unchanging chill. The continual dripping which would have seemed music if he had come upon it in a summer's noon, vexed him now, and took on tones that he wished to forget. Sylvane had provided him pitch pine to burn, because it would give more light, and there was a crevice which would lead the smoke away; but he fretfully told himself that the resinous sticks made the place smell like a tar kiln, and put out his fire rather than endure it. Then in the blank darkness his burned arm pained him intolerably, and presently he crept forth into the entrance which held the tiny spring to steep the cloths in water, hoping to assuage the hurt.