The trials of Steve Hawn and of Hiram Honeycutt for the death of the autocrat were bringing back the old friction.  Charges and counter-charges of perjury among witnesses had freshened the old enmity between the Hawns and the Honeycutts.  Jason himself had once to go back to the Blue-grass as witness, and when he returned he learned that the charge whispered against him, particularly by little Aaron, was that he had sworn falsely for Steve Hawn and falsely against Hiram Honeycutt.  Again Babe Honeycutt had come back from the West and had quietly slipped out of the mountains again, and Jason was led to believe it was on his account.  So once more the old oath began to weigh heavily upon him, for everybody seemed to take it as much for granted that he would some day fulfil that oath as that, after the dark of the moon, that moon would rise again.  Moreover, fate was inexorably pushing him and little Aaron into the same channels that their fathers had followed and putting on each the duty and responsibility of leadership.  And Jason, though shirking nothing, turned sick and faint of heart and was glad when the summer neared its close.

Through all his vacation he and Mavis had seen but little of each other, though Mavis lived with the old circuit rider and Jason in a little shack on the spur above her, for the boy was on the night shift and through most of the day was asleep.  Moreover, both were rather morose and brooding, each felt the deep trouble of the other, and to it each paid the mutual respect of silence.  How much Mavis knew, Jason little guessed, though he was always vaguely uneasy under the constant search of her dark eyes, and often he would turn toward her expecting her to speak.  But not until the autumn was at hand and they were both making ready to go back to the Blue-grass did she break her silence.  The news had just reached them that Steve Hawn had come clear at last and was at home—­and Mavis heard it with little elation and no comment.  Next day she announced calmly that she was not going back with Jason, but would stay in the hills and go on with her school.  Jason stared questioningly, but she would not explain—­she only became more brooding and silent than ever, and only when they parted one drowsy day in September was the thought within her betrayed: 

“I reckon maybe you won’t come back again.”

Jason was startled.  She knew then—­knew his discontent, his new longing to break the fetters of the hills, knew even that in his dreams Marjorie’s face was still shining like a star.  “Course I’m comin’ back,” he said, with a little return of his old boyish roughness, but his eyes fell before hers as he turned hurriedly away.  He was rolling away from the hills, and his mind had gone back to her seated with folded hands and unseeing eyes in the old circuit rider’s porch, dreaming, thinking—­thinking, dreaming—­ before he began fully to understand.  He remembered his mother telling him how unhappy Mavis had been