“Hello, Babe!” he said coolly.  “Whut devilmint you up to now?”

The giant smiled uneasily: 

“I’m keepin’ out o’ the sun an’ a-takin’ keer o’ my health,” he said, and his eyes dropped hungrily to the corn pone and fried fish, but the boy shook his head sturdily.

“You can’t git nothin’ to eat from me, Babe Honeycutt.”

“Now, looky hyeh, Jason—­”

“Not a durn bite,” said the boy firmly, “even if you air my mammy’s brother.  I’m a Hawn now, I want ye to know, an’ I ain’t goin’ to have my folks say I was feedin’ an’ harborin’ a Honeycutt—­’specially you.”

It would have been humorous to either Hawn or Honeycutt to hear the big man plead, but not to the girl, though he was an enemy, and had but recently wounded a cousin of hers, and was hiding from her own people, for her warm little heart was touched, and big Babe saw it and left his mournful eyes on hers.

“An’ I’m a-goin’ to tell whar I’ve seed ye,” went on the boy savagely, but the girl grabbed up two fish and a corn pone and thrust them out to the huge hairy hand eagerly stretched out.

“Now, git away,” she said breathlessly, “git away—­quick!”

“Mavis!” yelled the boy.

“Shet up!” she cried, and the lips of the routed boy fell apart in sheer amazement, for never before had she made the slightest question of his tyrannical authority, and then her eyes blazed at the big Honeycutt and she stamped her foot.

“I’d give ’em to the meanest dog in these mountains.”

The big man turned to the boy.

“Is he dead yit?”

“No, he ain’t dead yit,” said the boy roughly.

“Son,” said the mountaineer quietly, “you tell whutever you please about me.”

The curiously gentle smile had never left the bearded lips, but in his voice a slight proud change was perceptible.

“An’ you can take back yo’ corn pone, honey.”

Then dropping the food in his hand back to the ground, he noiselessly melted into the bushes again.

At once the boy went to work on his neglected corn-bread and fish, but the girl left hers untouched where they lay.  He ate silently, staring at the water below him, nor did the little girl turn her eyes his way, for in the last few minutes some subtle change in their relations had taken place, and both were equally surprised and mystified.  Finally, the lad ventured a sidewise glance at her beneath the brim of his hat and met a shy, appealing glance once more.  At once he felt aggrieved and resentful and turned sullen.

“He throwed it back in yo’ face,” he said.  “You oughtn’t to ‘a’ done it.”

Little Mavis made no answer.

“You’re nothin’ but a gal, an’ nobody’ll hold nothin’ agin you, but with my mammy a Honeycutt an’ me a-livin’ on the Honeycutt side, you mought ‘a’ got me into trouble with my own folks.”  The girl knew how Jason had been teased and taunted and his life made miserable up and down the Honeycutt creek, and her brown face grew wistful and her chin quivered.