“Oh, good Mister Painter, good Mister Debbil—­” he began.

Inasmuch as he was not devoured upon the instant, he finally ventured to look up and Joe laughed loudly.

So great was the relief of the old negro that he did not think of anger.  A sickly smile spread slowly on his face.  “De Lawd be praised!” he said.  “Why, hit’s a man!”

“Reckon I am,” said Joe.  “Generally pass for one.”  Then, although he knew quite well just why the man had come, from whom, for whom, he asked sternly to confuse him:  “What you doin’ in these mountings?”

“I’s lookin’ fo’ my massa, young Marse Frank Layson, suh,” Neb answered timidly.

“You needn’t to go fur to find him,” Lorey answered bitterly.  “You needn’t to go fur to find him.”

The old negro looked at him, puzzled and frightened by his grim tone and manner.

“Why—­why—­” he began.  “Is it hereabouts he hunts fo’ deer?  He wrote home he was findin’ good spo’t in the mountains, huntin’ deer.”

Joe’s mouth twitched ominously, involuntarily.  The mere presence of Old Neb, there, was another evidence of the great advantage, which, he began to feel with hopeless rage, the man who had stolen that thing from him which he prized most highly, had over him.  The negro was his servant.  Servants meant prosperity, prosperity meant power.  Backwoodsman as he was, Joe Lorey knew that perfectly.  His face gloomed in the twilight.

“Yes,” he answered bitterly, “it’s here he has been huntin’—­huntin’ deer—­the pootiest deer these mountings ever see.”  Of course the old negro did not understand the man’s allusion.  He was puzzled by the speech; but Joe went on without an explanation:  “But thar is danger in sech huntin’.  Your young master, maybe, better keep a lookout for his-self!”

His voice trembled with intensity.

In the meantime Layson was still seated thoughtfully before his fire of crackling “down-wood,” busy with a thousand speculations.  Just what Madge Brierly, the little mountain girl, meant to him, really, he could not quite determine.  He knew that he had been most powerfully attracted to her, but he did not fail to recognize the incongruity of such a situation.  He had never been a youth of many love-affairs.  Perhaps his regard for horses and the “sport of kings” had kept him from much travelling along the sentimental paths of dalliance with the fair sex.  Barbara Holton, back in the bluegrass country, had been almost the only girl whom he had ever thought, seriously, of marrying, and he had not, actually, spoken, yet, to her about it.  When he had left the lowlands for the mountains he had meant to, though, when he returned.  There were those, he thought, who believed them an affianced couple.  Now he wondered if they ever would be, really, and if, without actually speaking, he had not led her to believe that he would speak.  He was astonished at the thrill of actual fear he felt as he considered the mere possibility of this.