As they followed down Caney and struck [389] eastward toward the Cleaverage place, the morning drew on, sweet and towardly. For all the cold, there was an under-note of Spring in the air. February felt the stirring of the year which had turned in its sleep. They rode together, hand in hand, where the trail permitted, both remembering--Lance with an added light in his eyes and a meaning smile, Callista with a sudden burst of tears--that other ride they had taken together. Lance's arm around her, her head on his shoulder, when they went down to Squire Ashe's to be married. They traveled thus, in silence or with few words spoken, for nearly two hours. Their best road home would take them past the old Cleaverage place, and within a mile of the house. As they drew near this point something stirred down deep under Lance's quiet. His breath quickened, his face set in sharp lines. He suddenly strained Callista to him in a grasp that hurt, then released her, touched the patient Maje with his heel and pushed ahead at a good gait. Callista, watching him, followed drooping and mute. Moving so, swiftly and in single file they reached the place whence they could see the chimney of the Kimbro Cleaverage house through the trees, and were aware of a woman on a black horse, a child carried carefully in her arms, coming toward them. Callista lifted her hanging head and looked wonderingly around her husband. [390] "Why, I do believe that's Ola Derf on Cindy!" she said heavily. "Is it? No, I reckon not." Since the day on which Ola had bidden her strange reproachful adieu to Lance's empty room, no one had seen her on Turkey Track, though it was reported that she was staying with kin no further away than Hepzibah. "It is Ola," said Callista, as the rider of the black filly came nearer. "And she--she's got my baby! O Lord! What now?" For a moment the astonishment of it dulled the agony of rebellion which once more surged in Callista's soul as she looked at that chimney through the trees and knew that there by its hearthstone were the sheriff and his men ready to take Lance from her. "I come a-past the Gentry place and stopped to git the boy," Ola called, as soon as she could make them hear. It occurred to Callista that this girl, too, supposed that Lance would try to escape, and that they would wish to take the baby with them. "Sheriff Beason and his men are in yon," Lance told Ola, glancing in the direction of his father's house. "I'm going to my own place to give myself up--they're coming up there for me." Ola nodded, without making any immediate reply. She looked with curious questioning from husband to wife, shifting the baby to her hip. [391] "My, but he's solid," she said enviously, the aboriginal mother-woman showing strong in her ugly little brown face. "I'll take him," Callista murmured, putting out her arms almost mechanically. But Ola made no movement to hand over the baby. She yet sat her horse, glancing from one countenance to the other.