Gray shook his head:  “No!”

“Please, Gray,” she pleaded; “for God’s sake—­for my sake.”

That the boy could not withstand.  He started for the gate with his hat in hand—­is head high, and, as he slowly passed through the gate and turned, the old man reappeared, looked fiercely after him, and sank into a chair sick with rage and trembling.  As Mavis walked toward him with his weapons he glared at her, but she passed him by as though she did not see him, and put the Winchester and pistols in their accustomed places.  She came out with her bonnet in her hand, and already her calmness and her silence had each had its effect—­old Jason was still trembling, but from his eyes the rage was gone.

“I’m goin’ home, grandpap,” she said quietly, “an’ if it wasn’t for grandma I wouldn’t come back.  You’ve been bullyin’ an’ rough-ridin’ over men-folks and women-folks all your life, but you can’t do it no more with me.  An’ you’re not goin’ to meddle in my business any more.  You know I’m a good girl—­why didn’t you go after the folks who’ve been talkin’ instead o’ pitchin’ into Gray?  You know he’d die before he’d harm a hair o’ my head or allow you or anybody else to say anything against my good name.  An’ I tell you to your face”—­her tone fiercened suddenly—­“if you hadn’t ‘a’ been an old man an’ my grandfather, he’d ‘a’ killed you right here.  An’ I’m goin’ to tell you something more.  He ain’t responsible for this talk—­I am.  He didn’t know it was goin’ on--I did.  I’m not goin’ to marry him to please you an’ the miserable tattletales you’ve been listenin’ to.  I reckon I ain’t good enough—­but I know my kinfolks ain’t fit to be his—­even by marriage.  My daddy ain’t, an’ you ain’t, an’ there ain’t but one o’ the whole o’ our tribe who is—­an’ that’s little Jason Hawn.  Now you let him alone an’ you let me alone.”

She put her bonnet on, flashed to the gate, and disappeared in the dusk down the road.  The old man’s shaggy head had dropped forward on his chest, he had shrunk down in his chair bewildered, and he sat there a helpless, unanswering heap.  When the moon rose, Mavis was seated on the porch with her chin in both hands.  The old circuit rider and his wife had gone to bed.  A whippoorwill was crying with plaintive persistence far up a ravine, and the night was deep and still about her, save for the droning of insect life from the gloomy woods.  Straight above her stars glowed thickly, and in a gap of the hills beyond the river, where the sun had gone down, the evening star still hung like a great jewel on the velvety violet curtain of the night, and upon that her eyes were fixed.  On the spur above, her keen ears caught the soft thud of a foot against a stone, and her heart answered.  She heard a quick leap across the branch, the sound of a familiar stride along the road, and saw the quick coming of a familiar figure along the edge of the moonlight, but she sat where she was and as she was until Gray, with hat in hand, stood before her, and then only did she lift to him eyes that were dark as the night but shining like that sinking star in the little gap.  The boy went down on one knee before her, and gently pulled both of her, hands away from her face with both his own, and held them tightly.