The cabin was unlighted when Jason came in sight of it and apprehension straightway seized him; so that he broke into a run, but stopped at the gate and crept slowly to the porch and almost on tiptoe opened the door.  The fire was low, but the look of things was unchanged, and on the kitchen table he saw his cold supper laid for him.  His mother had maybe gone over the ridge for some reason to stay all night, so he gobbled his food hastily and, still uneasy, put forth for Mavis’s cabin over the hill.  That cabin, too, was dark and deserted, and he knew now what had happened—­that blast of the horn was a summons to a dance somewhere, and his mother and Steve had answered and taken Mavis with them; so the boy sat down on the porch, alone with the night and the big still dark shapes around him.  It would not be very pleasant for him to follow them—­people would tease him and ask him troublesome questions.  But where was the dance, and had they gone to it after all?  He rose and went swiftly down the creek.  At the mouth of it a light shone through the darkness, and from it a quavering hymn trembled on the still air.  A moment later Jason stood on the threshold of an open door and an old couple at the fireplace lifted welcoming eyes.

“Uncle Lige, do you know whar my mammy is?”

The old man’s eyes took on a troubled look, but the old woman answered readily: 

“Why, I seed her an’ Steve Hawn an’ Mavis a-goin’ down the crick jest afore dark, an’ yo’ mammy said as how they was aimin’ to go to yo’ grandpap’s.”

It was his grandfather’s horn, then, Jason had heard.  The lad turned to go, and the old circuit rider rose to his full height.

“Come in, boy.  Yo’ grandpap had better be a-thinkin’ about spreadin’ the wings of his immortal sperit, stid o’ shakin’ them feet o’ clay o’ his’n an’ a-settin’ a bad example to the young an’ errin’!”

“Hush up!” said the old woman.  “The Bible don’t say nothin’ agin a boy lookin’ fer his mammy, no matter whar she is.”

She spoke sharply, for Steve Hawn had called her husband out to the gate, where the two had talked in whispers, and the old man had refused flatly to tell her what the talk was about.  But Jason had turned without a word and was gone.  Out in the darkness of the road he stood for a moment undecided whether or not he should go back to his lonely home, and some vague foreboding started him swiftly on down the creek.  On top of a little hill he could see the light in his grandfather’s house, and that far away he could hear the rollicking tune of “Sourwood Mountain.”  The sounds of dancing feet soon came to his ears, and from those sounds he could tell the figures of the dance just as he could tell the gait of an unseen horse thumping a hard dirt road.  He leaned over the yard fence—­looking, listening, thinking.  Through the window he could see the fiddler with his fiddle pressed almost against his heart, his eyes closed, his horny fingers thumping