This side of the situation had not struck Jim at first.  He got up and walked the floor, while the girl, standing quietly by the fireplace, watched him, a proud, fond light in her eyes.  Sammy did not know what the bond between her father and the big ruffian was, but she knew that it was not a light one.  Now that the issue was fairly defined, she felt confident that, whatever the cost, the break would be made.

But at this time it was well that she did not know how great the cost of breaking the bond between the two men would be.

Jim stopped before his daughter, and, placing a hand upon each shoulder, said, “Tell me, girl; are you so powerful anxious to have me and Young Matt stay good friends like we’ve always been?”

“I—­I am afraid I am, Daddy.”

And then, a rare smile came into the dark face of Jim Lane.  He kissed the girl and said, “I’ll do it, honey.  I ain’t afraid to, now.”

CHAPTER XXX.

SAMMY GRADUATES

The next day when young Stewart came, the books were all back on the shelf in the main room of the cabin, and Sammy, dressed in a fresh gown of simple goods and fashion, with her hair arranged carefully, as she had worn it the last two months before Ollie’s coming, sat at the window reading.

The man was surprised and a little embarrassed.  “Why, what have you been doing to yourself?” he exclaimed.

“I have not been doing anything to myself.  I have only done some things to my clothes and hair,” returned the girl.

Then he saw the books.  “Why, where did these come from?  He crossed the room to examine the volumes.  “Do you—­do you read all these?”

“The shepherd has been helping me,” she explained.

“Oh, yes.  I understood that you were studying with him.”  He looked at her curiously, as though they were meeting for the first time.  Then, as she talked of her studies, his embarrassment deepened, for he found himself foundering hopelessly before this clear-eyed, clear-brained backwoods girl.

“Come,” said Sammy at last.  “Let us go for a walk.”  She led the way to her favorite spot, high up on the shoulder of Dewey, and there, with Mutton Hollow at their feet and the big hills about them, with the long blue ridges in the distance beyond which lay Ollie’s world, she told him what he feared to learn.  The man refused to believe that he heard aright.  “You do not understand,” he protested, and he tried to tell her of the place in life that would be hers as his wife.  In his shallowness, he talked even of jewels, and dresses, and such things.

“But can all this add one thing to life itself?” she asked.  “Is not life really independent of all these things?  Do they not indeed cover up the real life, and rob one of freedom?  It seems to me that it must be so.”

He could only answer, “But you know nothing about it.  How can you?  You have never been out of these woods.”