I can see him now, as the twilight settled down over the wilderness, his honest face red and freckled, but aglow with the tenderness it had hidden during the day, one big hand enfolding hers, and the other on my shoulder.

“Hark, Davy!” said Polly Ann, “he’s fair tired of us already.  Davy, take me back.”

“Hush, Polly Ann,” he answered; delighted at her raillery.  “But I’ve a word to say to you.  If we come on to the redskins, you and Davy make for the cane as hard as you kin kilter.  Keep out of sight.”

“As hard as we kin kilter!” exclaimed Polly Ann, indignantly.  “I reckon not, Tom McChesney.  Davy taught me to shoot long ago, afore you made up your mind to come back from Kaintuckee.”

Tom chuckled.  “So Davy taught you to shoot,” he said, and checked himself.  “He ain’t such a bad one with a pistol,”—­and he patted me,—­“but I allow ye’d better hunt kiver just the same.  And if they ketch ye, Polly Ann, just you go along and pretend to be happy, and tear off a snatch of your dress now and then, if you get a chance.  It wouldn’t take me but a little time to run into Harrodstown or Boone’s Station from here, and fetch a party to follow ye.”

Two days went by,—­two days of strain in sunlight, and of watching and fitful sleep in darkness.  But the Wilderness Trail was deserted.  Here and there a lean-to—­silent remnant of the year gone by—­spoke of the little bands of emigrants which had once made their way so cheerfully to the new country.  Again it was a child’s doll, the rags of it beaten by the weather to a rusty hue.  Every hour that we progressed seemed to justify the sagacity and boldness of Tom’s plan, nor did it appear to have entered a painted skull that a white man would have the hardihood to try the trail this year.  There were neither signs nor sounds save Nature’s own, the hoot of the wood-owl, the distant bark of a mountain wolf, the whir of a partridge as she left her brood.  At length we could stand no more the repression that silence and watching put upon us, and when a rotten bank gave way and flung Polly Ann and the sorrel mare into a creek, even Weldon smiled as we pulled her, bedraggled and laughing, from the muddy water.  This was after we had ferried the Rockcastle River.

Our trace rose and fell over height and valley, until we knew that we were come to a wonderland at last.  We stood one evening on a spur as the setting sun flooded the natural park below us with a crystal light and, striking a tall sycamore, turned its green to gold.  We were now on the hills whence the water ran down to nourish the fat land, and I could scarce believe that the garden spot on which our eyes feasted could be the scene of the blood and suffering of which we had heard.  Here at last was the fairyland of my childhood, the country beyond the Blue Wall.