One day the blooming Rachel discovers the melancholy Andrew, dreamily mournful by the orchard fence. She watches him unperceived, and her gentle bosom yearns over him. The blooming Rachel is not wanting in that taint of romanticism to which all border folk are born; and now, to see this Hector!--this lion among men!--so bent in sadness, moves her tenderly. At that it is only a kind of maternal tenderness; for the blooming Rachel has a wealth of mother love, and no children upon whom to lavish it. She stands looking at the melancholy one, and would give worlds if she might only take his head to her sympathetic bosom and cherish it. The blooming Rachel approaches, and cheerily greets the gloomy one. She seeks to uplift his spirits. Under the sweet spell of her, he tells how wholly alone he is. He speaks of his mother and how her very grave is lost. He relates how the Revolution swallowed up the lives of his two brothers. “And your father?” “He was buried the week before I was born.” The two stay by the orchard fence a long while, and talk on many things; but never once on love. The drunken Robards, fiend-guided, gets a green-eyed glimpse of them. With that his jealousy receives added edge, and--the better to decide upon a course--he hurries to a grog-gery to pour down rum by the cup. Either he drinks beyond his wont, or that rum is of sterner impulse than common; for he becomes pot-valorous, and with curses vows the death of Andrew. The drunken Robards, filled with rum to the brim, issues forth to execute his threats. He finds his victim still sadly by the orchard fence; but alone, since the blooming Rachel has been called to aid in supper-getting. The pot-valorous Robards bursts into a torrent of jealous recrimination. The melancholy Andrew cannot believe his ears! His melancholy takes flight when he does understand, and in its stead comes white-hot anger. “What! you scoundrel!” he roars. The blue eyes blaze with such ferocity that Robards the craven starts back. In a moment the other has control of himself. “Sir!” he grits, “you shall give me satisfaction!” Robards the drunken says nothing, being frozen of fear. The enraged Andrew stalks away in quest of the taciturn Overton who owns those hair triggers. “Let us take a walk,” says hair-trigger Overton, running his arm inside the lean elbow of Andrew. Once in the woods, he goes on: “What do you want to do?” “Kill him! I would put him in hell in a second!” “Doubtless! Having killed him, what then will you do?” “I don't understand.” “Let me explain: You kill Robards. His wife is a widow. Also, because you have killed Robards in a quarrel over her, she is the talk of the settlement. Therefore, I put the question: Having made Rachel the scandal of the Cumberland, what will you do?” There is a long, embarrassed pause. Presently Andrew lifts his gaze to the cool eyes of his friend. “I shall offer her marriage. She shall, if she accept it, have the protection of my name.”