Cleaverage stood gazing at them with eyes indecipherable, then--turned his back. "And look at Lance Cleaverage," exhorted Little Liza, "a drinkin', coon-huntin', banjo playin' feller that don't darken the doors of a church--his own sister cain't never name him without tellin' how wicked he is. Let him go, honey--you let him go, an' take Flent." Lance, standing with his back to them, holding his horses, had begun to whistle. At first the sound was scarcely to be heard above the babel of voices in the lighted room--but it came clearly to Callista's ears. Flenton's hand reached hers; Ellen joined her entreaties to those of Little Liza. Callista, while not a church member, had always aligned herself with the ultra-religious element; she had been the companion and peer of those eminently fitted and ever ready to sit in judgment on the unworthy. Now she heard all these joining to condemn Lance. The tune outside went seeking softly among the turns and roulades with which Lance always embellished a melody. It was the song he had sung under her window. Her heart remembered the words. "How many years, how many miles, Far from the door where my darling smiles? How many miles, how many years . . . ?" His musing, eyes were on the far line of mountains, velvety black against the luminous blackness of the sky; his gaze rested thoughtfully on a great star that hung shining in the dusk over the horizon's edge. He seemed deaf to the clatter and squabble, blind to the movement in the room behind him. Softly he whistled, like a man wandering pensive beside a lonely sea, or in some remote, solitary forest, a man untouched by the more immediate and human things of life. The two horses after snorting and pulling back at first sight of the unaccustomed lights and the noisy voices, put down their noses toward the long, lush dooryard grass. "He ain't lookin' at you. He ain't a-carin'," Flenton whispered to her. For the first time Callista glanced directly to where her bridegroom stood. His back was to her--yes, his back was to her. And though the little whistle went questing on with its "How many miles--how many years?" even as her eye rested on him he made a leisurely movement toward one of the horses, like a man who might be about to mount. Swift as a shadow she slipped through the hands of those around her and down the steps. "Lance," she breathed. "Lance." Then she was in his arms. He had lifted her to the saddle. "Good land!" wailed Octavia Gentry, "if you've [102] got to go, Sis, they's no use ruinin' yo' frock. Here's your ridin' skirt," and she flourished the long calico garment and struggled to get down to the mounted pair. Lance was on the other horse now. He paid no attention to any of them, but let his smiling gaze rove for the last time over the lighted windows, the noisy people, the long tables. "What time will you-all be back?" called the still secretly chuckling old Ajax from the doorway, as he saw them depart.