"Never," answered Lance's clear hail. "Oh, Lance--ain't you a-goin' to come back and have the weddin'?" began Octavia. At this the bridegroom turned in his saddle, reining in thoughtfully. He would not accept this mutilated ceremony, yet the wedding of Lance Cleaverage should not be shorn in the eyes of his neighbors. Slowly he wheeled his horse and faced them all once more. "Callista and me ain't coming back here," he assured them, without heat, yet with decision. "But I bid you-all to an infare at my house tomorrow night." Then once more he wheeled his pony, caught at Callista's bridle, and sweeping into the big road, started the two forward at a gallop. His arm was round Callista's waist. Her head drooped in the relief of a decision arrived at, and a final abandonment to her real feeling that was almost [103] swoon-like, on the conqueror's shoulder. The horses sprang forward as one. "Callista--sweetheart," he whispered with his lips against her hair, "we don't want nothin' of them folks back there, do we? We don't want nothin' of anybody in the world. Just you and me--you and me." [104] CHAPTER VII. LANCE'S LAUREL. THE inheritance of Lance Cleaverage came to him from his maternal grandfather. Jesse Lance had felt it bitterly when his handsome high-spirited youngest daughter ran away with Kimbro Cleaverage, teacher of a little mountain school, a gentle, unworldly soul who would never get on in life. His small namesake was four years old when Grandfather Lance, himself a hawkfaced, up-headed man, undisputed master of his own household, keen on the hunting trail, and ready as ever for a fight or a frolic, came past and stopped at the Cleaverage farm on the way from his home in the Far Cove neighborhood down to the Settlement to buy mules, and, incidentally, to arrange about his will. He was not advanced in years, and he was in excellent health; but there were a number of married sons and daughters to portion, he had a considerable amount of property, and his wife was ailing. It had been suggested that both should make their wills; so the documents, duly written out, signed and attested, were being carried down to Jesse Lance's lawyer in Hepzibah. [105] He had seen almost nothing of his one-time favorite, Melissa, since the marriage twelve years before with Cleaverage that so disappointed him; and he had not now expected to remain the night in her house. But the little Lance, a small splinter of manhood, at once caught his grandfather's eye. The child stirred Jesse Lance's curiosity perhaps--or it may have been some deeper feeling. The first collision between these two occurred as the visitor, having dismounted, approached the Cleaverage gate. He had his favorite hound with him, and four-year-old Lance, leading forth old Speaker, his chosen comrade, observed the hair rise on the neck of grandfather's follower, and listened with delight to the rumble of growls the dogs exchanged.