The Almighty to Whom she made her plea, and Who knew everything, must know, even as she knew, that Turner Stacy was not like those rowdy youths who habitually disgraced the hills. That occasional smile which lurked with its inherent sweetness under his affected sullenness must mean _something_. Turner had always been her willing vassal, and "sometime" she had supposed, though hitherto that had always seemed a vaguely distant matter like the purple haze on the horizon, they would be avowed sweethearts. Yesterday, though, as she walked back from the meeting on the ridge it had seemed as if she had spent a moment in that languourous land where the far mists drouse,--and yet the glamour had not faded. She hadn't sought to analyze then, she had only felt a new thrill in her heart as she instinctively broke clusters of pink-hearted bloom from the laurel. She left the woods after a while and as she came out again to the high road, she heard a voice raised in the high-pitched, almost falsetto, minors of mountain minstrelsy. It was not a pleasing voice, nor was the ballad a cheery one. As for the singer himself, the twisting of the way still concealed him from view, so that his song proclaimed him like a herald in advance. "He stobbed her to ther heart an' she fell with a groan. He threw a leetle dirt _ov_-er her, an' started fer home," wailed the dolorous voice of the traveler. There was a splashing of hoofs in shallow water, then a continuation "His debt ter ther devil now William must pay, Fer he fell down an' died afore break of day." Thus announced, a mule plodded shortly into sight, and upon his back, perching sidewise, sat a tow-headed lout of a boy with staring, vacant eyes and a mouth which hung open, even when he desisted from song. With an access of callow diffidence he halted his mount at sight of Blossom, staring with a nod and a bashful "Howdy." "Howdy, Leander," accosted the girl. "How's all your folks?" Leander White, of Crowfoot Branch, aged fifteen, gulped twice with prodigious and spasmodic play of his adam's apple, before he eventually commanded voice to reply: "They're all well.... I'm obleeged ... ter ye." Then, however, reassured by the cordial smile on the lips of Blossom Fulkerson, his power of speech and his hunger for gossip returned to him in unison. "But old Aunt Lucy Hutton, over acrost ther branch, she fell down yistiddy an' broke a bone inside of her, though." "Did she?" demanded the girl, readily sympathetic, and Leander, thus given sanction as a purveyor of tidings, nodded and gathered confidence. "Huh-huh, an' Revenuers raided Joe Simmons's still-house on ther headwaters of Skinflint an' cyarried off a _beau_tiful piece o' copper--atter they'd punched hit full o' holes." "Revenuers!" Into the girl's voice now came a note of anxiety. "Huh-huh, revenuers. Folks says they're gittin' bodaciously pesky these days."