"I've ben a wushin' ye'd come an' I'm so glad!" she murmured, as she opened the gate for him. "Hit air so lonesome when ye'r away." Her lithe, plump figure was clothed in a clinging gown of cotton stuff and a white kerchief was pinned about her throat. Down over her shoulders in a long, rather thin brush fell her rimpled pale yellow hair. Her cheeks glowed and her lips had on them the dew of innocent and, alas, ignorant maidenhood. A flash of recognition leaped into the mind of Reynolds, though he was scarcely conscious of it, and Milly White's strange beauty was no longer invisible to him. "Ye ortn't to stay away so long," she added, not in rebuke, but in a low, quavering voice like that of some happy bird. Her mountain dialect, crabbed as it appears in writing, added emphasis to the fresh, half wild tenderness of her tones. All around the woods and little broken fields were dim and silent. The warm southern stars burned overhead and the fitful balmy air crept past with furtive whispers. The moon slipped down behind the mountain, leaving on the peak a delicate wavering ghost that slowly vanished into the common haze of the night. Reynolds paused in the little gateway and looked down into Milly's lifted shining face. In that instant a tender feeling, a subtle sense of some obscure but immediate draught upon the inner sources of his passionate nature, took complete possession of him. The touching sweetness of her face, the wild grace of her form, and that charming expression of strength and development, impressed him. He forgot the cabin, the pinched and sapless mountain life and all its empty hopelessness. For the time he saw nothing but Milly as his over-stimulated imagination lighted her face and form with the allurements of irresistible beauty. He stooped, and, swiftly folding her in his arms, kissed her passionately. "Oh!" she cried, her voice slipping with sharp sweetness away through the dusky woods. It was like the quick musical chirp of a glad bird. She clung to him with strong, loving arms. [Illustration: Her voice was like the quick musical chirp of a glad bird. She clung to him with strong, loving arms. _Page 68_.] He let her go presently and said: "It is late for you to be out; come in now, the night air is beginning to be chilly and you'll catch a cold." "Oh, no!" she naïvely responded, "let's us stay out yer, they're a smokin' in ther, an' hit's so nice ter be out yer." Her mountain dialect, as filtered through her pure, peculiarly musical voice, lost all its harshness and became a fitting expression of a part of the fascinating enigma of her character. "Ye'v' ben away so long, John, an' sometimes I wus afeared to go er-sleep 'cause ye wus gone, an' 'cause I'd dream ye wus dead." "Well, come in now," he gently urged, drawing the long pale brush of her hair through his hand and passing on into the cabin.