"Don't seem to hear me ... just keep looking straight ahead.... It's not Bear Cat.... It's Henderson ... and they are after me.... So far I've escaped ... but I reckon they're following." He had seen the impulsive start with which she heard his announcement and the instant recovery with which she relaxed her attitude into one of less tell-tale significance. "Thank God," breathed the pursued man, "for that self-control!" He detected a heart-wrenching anxiety in her voice, which belied the picture she made of unruffled simplicity as she commanded in a tense whisper, "Go on, I'm hearkenin'." "Go back into the house," he directed evenly. "Close the window shutters ... then open the back door...." She did not obey with the haste of excitement. She was too wise for that, but paused unhurriedly, humming an ancient ballade, as though the stresses of life had no meaning for her, before she drew back and closed the door. Reappearing, at the window, she repeated the same convincing assumption of untroubled indolence as she drew in the heavy shutters; but a moment later she stood shaken and blanched of cheek at the rear door. "Come in hastily," she pleaded. "Air ye hurted?" Slipping through the aperture, Henderson smiled at her. His heart had leaped wildly as he read the terror of her eyes: a terror for his danger. "I'm not hurt," he assured her, "except for a twisted ankle, but it's a miracle of luck. Where's your father?" No actress trained and finished in her art could have carried off with greater perfection a semblance of tranquillity than had Blossom while his safety hung in the balance. Now, with that need ended, she leaned back against the support of the wall with her hands gropingly spread; weak of knee and limp almost to collapse. Her amber eyes were preternaturally wide and her words came with gasping difficulty. She had forgotten her striving after exemplary grammar. "He hain't hyar--he won't be back afore to-morrow noon. Thar hain't nobody hyar but me." "Oh!" The monosyllable slipped from the man's lips with bitter disappointment. He knew the rigid tenets of mountain usage--an unwritten law. A stranger may share a one-roomed shack with men, women and children, but the traveler who is received into a cabin in the absence of its men compromises the honor of its women. "Oh," he repeated dejectedly, "I was seekin' shelter for the night. I'm famishin' an' weary. Kin ye give me a snack to eat. Blossom, afore I fares forth again?" It was with entire unconsciousness that he had slipped back into the rough vernacular of his childhood. At that moment he was a man who had rubbed elbows with death and he had reverted to type as instinctively as though he had never known any other life. "Afore ye fares forth!" In Blossom's eyes blazed the same Valkyrie fire that had been in them as she barred his path to Bear Cat Stacy's still. "Ye hain't a-goin ter fare forth, ter be murdered! I aims ter hide ye out right hyar!"