What a land of peace and plenty it was—­the woodlands, meadows, pasture lands!  Fat cattle raised their noses from the thick grass and looked with mild inquiry at him.  Sheep ran bleating toward him, as though he were come to salt them.  A rabbit leaped from a thorn-bush and whisked his white flag into safety in a hemp-field.  Squirrels barked in the big oaks, and a covey of young quail fluttered up from a fence corner and sailed bravely away.  ’Possum signs were plentiful, and on the edge of the creek he saw a coon solemnly searching under a rock with one paw for crawfish Every now and then Dixie would turn her head impatiently to the left, for she knew where home was.  The Deans’ house was just over the hill he would have but the ride to the top to see it and, perhaps, Margaret.  There was no need.  As he sat, looking up the hill, Margaret herself rode slowly over it, and down, through the sunlight slanting athwart the dreaming woods, straight toward him.  Chad sat still.  Above him the road curved, and she could not see him until she turned the little thicket just before him.  Her pony was more startled than was she.  A little leap of color to her face alone showed her surprise.

“Did you get my note?”

“I did.  You got my mother’s message?”

“I did.”  Chad paused.  “That is why I am passing around you.”

The girl said nothing.

“But I’m glad I came so near.  I wanted to see you once more.  I wish I could make you understand.  But nobody understands.  I hardly understand myself.  But please try to believe that what I say is true.  I’m just back from the mountains, and listen, Margaret—­” He halted a moment to steady his voice.  “The Turners down there took me in when I was a ragged outcast.  They clothed me, fed me, educated me.  The Major took me when I was little more; and he fed me, clothed me, educated me.  The Turners scorned me—­Melissa told me to go herd with the Dillons.  The Major all but turned me from his door.  Your father was bitter toward me, thinking that I had helped turn Harry to the Union cause.  But let me tell you!  If the Turners died, believing me a traitor; if Lissy died with a curse on her lips for me; if the Major died without, as he believed, ever having polluted his lips again with my name; if Harry were brought back here dead, and your father died, believing that his blood was on my hands; and if I lost you and your love, and you died, believing the same thing—­I must still go.  Oh, Margaret, I can’t understand—­I have ceased to reason.  I only know I must go!”

The girl in the mountains had let her rage and scorn loose like a storm, but the gentlewoman only grew more calm.  Every vestige of color left her, but her eyes never for a moment wavered from his face.  Her voice was quiet and even and passionless.

“Then, why don’t you go?”

The lash of an overseer’s whip across his face could not have made his soul so bleed.  Even then he did not lose himself.