He was knocking his bare heels together and thinking idly of Major Dabney and certain disquieting rumors lately come to Paradise, when the tinkling drip of the spring into the pool at the foot of his perch was interrupted by a sudden splash.

By shifting a little to the right he could see the spring.  A girl of about his own age, barefooted, and with only her tangled mat of dark hair for a head covering, was filling her bucket in the pool.  He broke a dry twig from the nearest cedar and dropped it on her.

“You better quit that, Tom-Jeff Gordon.  I taken sight o’ you up there,” said the girl, ignoring him otherwise.

“That’s my spring, Nan Bryerson,” he warned her dictatorially.

The girl looked up and scoffed.  Hers was a face made for scoffing:  oval and finely lined, with a laughing mouth and dark eyes that had both the fear and the fierceness of wild things in them.

“Shucks! it ain’t your spring any more’n it’s mine!” she retorted.  “Hit’s on Maje’ Dabney’s land.”

“Well, don’t you muddy it none,” said Thomas Jefferson, with threatening emphasis.

For answer to this she put one brown foot deep into the pool and wriggled her toes in the sandy bottom.  Things began to turn red for Thomas Jefferson, and a high, buzzing note, like the tocsin of the bees, sang in his ears.

“Take your foot out o’ that spring!  Don’t you mad me, Nan Bryerson!” he cried.

She laughed up at him and flung him a taunt.  “You don’t darst to get mad, Tommy-Jeffy; you’ve got religion.”

It is a terrible thing to be angry in shackles.  There are similes—­pent volcanoes, overcharged boilers and the like—­but they are all inadequate.  Thomas Jefferson searched for missiles more deadly than dry twigs, found none, and fell headlong—­not from the rock, but from grace. “Damn!” he screamed; and then, in an access of terrified remorse:  “Oh, hell, hell, hell!”

The girl laughed mockingly and took her foot from the pool, not in deference to his outburst, but because the water was icy cold and gave her a cramp.

“Now you’ve done it,” she remarked.  “The devil’ll shore get ye for sayin’ that word, Tom-Jeff.”

There was no reply, and she stepped back to see what had become of him.  He was prone, writhing in agony.  She knew the way to the top of the rock, and was presently crouching beside him.

“Don’t take on like that!” she pleaded.  “Times I cayn’t he’p bein’ mean:  looks like I was made thataway.  Get up and slap me, if you want to.  I won’t slap back.”

But Thomas Jefferson only ground his face deeper into the thick mat of cedar needles and begged to be let alone.

“Go away; I don’t want you to talk to me!” he groaned.  “You’re always making me sin!”

“That’s because you’re Adam and I’m Eve, ain’t it?  Wasn’t you tellin’ me in revival time that Eve made all the ’ruction ’twixt the man and God?  I reckon she was right sorry; don’t you?”