“These gentlemen, I think, are beside themselves,” he said quietly, “and I must ask your permission to withdraw.”

Jason followed him out to the court-house door and watched him, erect as a soldier, march down the street, and he knew the trouble that was in store for the old gentleman, for already he had heard similar incendiary talk from the small farmers around his mother’s home.

The following June Marjorie and Gray Pendleton brought back finishing touches of dress, manner, and atmosphere to the dazzled envy of the less fortunate, in spite of the fact that both bore their new claims to distinction with a modesty that would have kept a stranger from knowing that they had ever been away from home.  Jason and Mavis were still at the old university when the two arrived.  To the mountaineers all four had once seemed almost on the same level, such had once been the comradeship between them, but now the old chasm seemed to yawn wider than ever between them, and there was no time for it to close, if closing were possible, for again Jason went back to the hills—­this time to Morton Sanders’ opening mines—­and, this time, Mavis went with him to teach Hawns and Honeycutts in a summer school on the outskirts of the little mining town.  Again for Jason the summer was one of unflagging work and learning—­learning all he could, all the time.  He had discovered that to get his land back through the law, he must prove that Arch Hawn or Colonel Pendleton not only must have known about the big seam of coal, not only must have concealed the fact of their knowledge from his mother and Steve Hawn, but, in addition, must have told one or both, with the purpose of fraud, that the land was worth no more than was visible to the eye in timber and seams of coal that were known to all.  That Colonel Pendleton could have been guilty of such underhandedness was absurd.  Moreover, Jason’s mother said that no such statement had been made to her by either, though Steve had sworn readily that Arch had said just that thing to him.  But Jason began to believe that Steve had lied, and Arch Hawn laughed when he heard of Jason’s investigations.

“Son, if you want that land back, or, ruther, the money it’s worth, you git right down to work, learn the business, and dig it back in another way.”

And that was what Jason, half unconsciously, was doing.  And yet, with all the ambition that was in him, his interest in the work, his love for the hills, his sense of duty to his people and his wish to help them, the boy was sorely depressed that summer, for the talons with which the fate of birth and environment clutched him seemed to be tightening now again.