Until a little while ago--a very little while--she had sung with the birds and her spirits had sparkled with the sunshine that flashed back from woodland greenery. Life had seemed a simple thing with the rainbow promise of romance lying somewhere ahead. Then Turner had awakened her to a conception of adult love--a conception which might have satisfied all her dreams had not Jerry Henderson come to dazzle her and alter her standards of comparison. Henderson had, as even his critic at the club admitted, that "damned charm" that is seductively indefinable yet potent, and what had been "damned charm" to the clubman's sophistication was a marvelous and prodigal wonder to the mountain girl. He had wooed her passionately in the shadow of death. He had come back to her through the shadow of death, and left her to go, not only into its shadow, but its grimly mysterious reality. Now he was not only her hero but also her martyr. Mountain children know little of Christmas, except that it is often a period of tragedy, since then men ride wildly with pistol and jug, and hilarity turns too often to homicide. But one Christmas legend the children do know: that on the night and at the hour of the Saviour's birth the cattle kneel in homage and the sere elder bushes, for a brief matter of miraculous minutes, break into a foam of bloom. Blossom clung to that beautiful parable, even now finding comfort in its sentiment, as she stood among the untended graves. "I wonder now," she speculated, nodding her head wistfully toward the inquisitive cotton-tail that sat wriggling its diminutive nose, "I wonder now ef it would be _wrong_ to put some elder branches here Christmas eve so thet--that--if they does bloom--I mean _do_ bloom--they'd be nigh him?" "Howdy, Blossom," accosted a voice and the girl looked up startled. Lone Stacy's wife stood at the thicketed edge of the burial-ground, gazing at her, with eyes less friendly than their former wont. The girl-widow came slowly forward, trying to smile, but under that unblinking stare she felt unhappy, and the older woman went on with a candid bluntness. "La! Ye've done broke turrible, hain't ye? An' ye used ter be ther purtiest gal hyarabouts, too." "It's been--hard times fer me," Blossom answered faintly. "Hit's done been right hard times fer all of us, I reckon," came the uncompromising rejoinder, "but thet hain't no proper cause ter ketch yore death of grave-yard damp," and with that admonition, Mrs. Stacy went on her way. Blossom stood silently looking after her, wondering vaguely why that almost resentful note of hardness had rasped in her voice.