They had married all in haste while September was still green over the land. The commodious new cabin at the head of Lance's Laurel was well plenished and its food supplies sufficient during the first few weeks of life there; in fact, Lance [155] gave without question whatever Callista asked of him--a thing unheard of in their world--and Callista's ideas of asking were not small nor was she timid about putting them into practice. The pair of haggards might have seemed, to the casual onlooker, safely settled to calm domestic happiness. Day by day the gold and blue of September inclined toward the October purple and scarlet. The air was invigorated by frost. The forest green, reflected in creek-pools, was full of russet and olive, against whose shadowy background here and there a gum or sourwood, earliest to turn of all the trees, blazed like a deep red plume. Occasional banners of crimson began to show in the maples and plum colored boughs in sweet-gums. The perfect days of all the year were come. Mid-October was wonderfully clear arid sweet up at the head of Lance's Laurel; the color key became richer, more royal; the sunset rays along the hill-tops a more opulent yellow. It was not till the leaves were sifting down red and yellow over her dooryard, that Callista got from Lance the full story concerning their resources, and the havoc he had made of them to get ready money from Derf. He had been hauling tanbark all this time to pay the unjust debt. When she knew, even her inexperience was staggered--dismayed. So far, she had not gone home, and she shut her lips tight over the [156] resolution not now to do so with a request for that aid which her grandfather had refused in advance. "We'll make out, I reckon," she said to her husband dubiously. "Oh, we'll get along all right," returned that hardy adventurer, easily. "We'll scrabble through the winter somehow. In the summer I can always make a-plenty at haulin' or at my trade. I'm goin' to put in the prettiest truck-patch anybody ever saw for you; and then we'll live fat, Callista." He added suddenly, "Come summer we'll go camping over on the East Fork of Caney. There's a place over on that East Fork that I believe in my soul nobody's been since the Indians, till I found it. There's a little rock house and a spring--I'm not going to tell you too much about it till you see it." Callista hearkened with vague alarm, and a sort of impatience. "But you'll clear enough ground for a good truck-patch before we go," she put in jealously. "Uh-huh," agreed Lance without apparently noting what her words were. "I never in my life did see as fine huckleberries as grows down in that little holler," he pursued. "We'll go in huckleberry time." "And maybe I can put some up," said Callista, the practical, beginning to take interest in the scheme. [157] "Shore," was Lance's prompt assent. "I can put up fruit myself--I'll help you."