The lithe limbs threshed through the dew-drenched, scented undergrowth. The trees grew more openly now; clearing was at hand. "--My true love--by and bye," hummed the light, sweet baritone. Callista had petulantly refused to go to church with her mother and grandfather. For no reason which she could assign, she wanted to be alone. [62] Then when they were all gone, she wished she had accompanied them. An indefinable disquiet possessed her. She could not stay in the house. Candle in hand she sought an outside cabin where stood the loom. Climbing to the loft room of this she set her light down and began to search out some quilt pieces, which she figured to herself as the object of her present excursion. Though she would have denied it with scorn, the idea of Lance Cleaverage filled her completely; Lance, the man who was preparing to marry her, yet upon whom--of all those who had come near her, in the free, fortuitous commerce of marriageable youth in the mountains--she had, it seemed to her, been able to lay no charm, to exert no influence. He met her; he exchanged cut and thrust with her, and he went his ways after their encounters, neither more nor less than he had been before. He came back seemingly at the dictates of time and chance only, and never hotter nor colder, never hastening to nor avoiding her. A bitterness tinged all her thought... She wondered if she would have seen him had she gone to meeting . . . She reflected jealously that he was much more likely to be at the frolic at Derf's. . . . She wished she knew how to dance. All at once, on the vague introspection of her mood, she became aware of the recurrent stroke of a soft musical note--the humming of Lance's banjo. Crouching rigidly by the little chest that [63] held her quilt scraps, she listened. It was a trick of the imagination--she had thought so much about him that she fancied him near. Then, with a sudden heavy beating of the heart, she realized that if he had been at the dance and gone home early he might be passing now on the big road. She smiled at her own folly; this tremulous low call could never be heard across two fields and the door-yard. And it was a banjo . . . it was Lance's banjo . . . he was playing whisperingly, too, as he loved to do. Then the strings ceased to whisper. Clearer came their voice and louder. Without thinking to extinguish her candle, she ran to the window and knelt hearkening. She looked down on the moonlit yard. All was silent and homely . . . but that was Lance's banjo. Even as she came to this decision. Lance himself broke through the greenery at the edge of the near field, vaulted a low fence, and emerged into the open. He came on in the soft light, singing a little, apparently to himself.