“Well, she ain’t goin’ home,” Steve drawled.

The boy went sick and speechless with fury, but before he could get his breath Steve drawled again: 

“She’s goin’ to live here now—­we got married to-night.”  The boy dropped helplessly against the gate at these astounding words and his silence stirred Steve to kindness.

“Now, don’t take it so hard, Jason.  Come on in, boy, an’ stay all night.”

Still the lad was silent and another face appeared at the door.

“Come on in, Jasie.”

It was his mother’s voice and the tone was pleading, but the boy, with no answer, turned, and they heard his stumbling steps as he made his way along the fence and started over the spur.  Behind him his mother began to sob and with rough kindness Steve soothed her and closed the door.

Slowly little Jason climbed the spur and dropped on the old log on which he had so often sat—­fighting out the trouble which he had so long feared must come.  The moon and the stars in her wake were sinking and the night was very still.  His reason told him his mother was her own mistress, and had the right to marry when she pleased and whom she pleased, but she was a Honeycutt, again she had married a Hawn, and the feud was starting again.  Steve Hawn would be under suspicion as his own father had been, Steve would probably have to live on the Honeycutt side of the ridge, and Jason’s own earlier days of shame he must go through again.  That was his first thought, but his second was a quick oath to himself that he would not go through them again.  He was big enough to handle a Winchester now, and he would leave his mother and he would fight openly with the Hawns.  And then as he went slowly down the spur he began to wonder with fresh suspicion what his mother and Steve might now do, what influence Steve might have over her, and if he might not now encourage her to sell her land.  And, if that happened, what would become of him?  The old hound in the porch heard him coming and began to bay at him fiercely, but when he opened the gate the dog bounded to him whining with joy and trying to lick his hands.  He dropped on the porch and the loneliness of it all clutched his heart so that he had to gulp back a sob in his throat and blink his eyes to keep back the tears.  But it was not until he went inside finally and threw himself with his clothes on across his mother’s empty bed that he lost all control and sobbed himself to sleep.  When he awoke it was not only broad daylight, but the sun was an hour high and streaming through the mud-chinked crevices of the cabin.  In his whole life he had never slept so long after daybreak and he sprang up in bed with bewildered eyes, trying to make out where he was and why he was there.  The realization struck him with fresh pain, and when he slowly climbed out of the bed the old hound was whining at the door.  When he opened it the fresh wind striking his warm body aroused him sharply.