“I’m a-goin’ home,” repeated Jason stubbornly.

“Home?” repeated the girl, and her tone did what her look had done a moment before, for she knew he had no home, and again the lad was filled with a throbbing uneasiness.  Her eyes dropped to her pony’s mane, and in a moment more she looked up with shy earnestness.

“Will you do something for me?”

Again Jason started and of its own accord his tongue spoke words that to his own ears were very strange.

“Thar hain’t nothin’ I won’t do fer ye,” he said, and his sturdy sincerity curiously disturbed Marjorie in turn, so that her flush came back, and she went on with slow hesitation and with her eyes again fixed on her pony’s neck.

“I want you to promise me not—­not to shoot anybody—­unless you have to in self-defence—­and never to take another drink until—­ until you see me again.”

She could not have bewildered the boy more had she asked him never to go barefoot again, but his eyes were solemn when she looked up and solemnly he nodded assent.

“I give ye my hand.”

The words were not literal, but merely the way the mountaineer phrases the giving of a promise, but the little girl took them literally and she rode up to him with slim fingers outstretched and a warm friendly smile on her little red mouth.  Awkwardly the lad thrust out his dirty, strong little hand.

“Good-by, Jason,” she said.

“Good-by—­” he faltered, and, still smiling, she finished the words for him.

“Marjorie,” she said, and unsmilingly he repeated: 

“Marjorie.”

While she passed through the gate he sat still and watched her, and he kept on watching her as she galloped toward home, twisting in his saddle to follow her course around the winding road.  He saw a negro boy come out to the stile to take her pony, and there Marjorie, dismounting, saw in turn the lad still motionless where she had left him, and looking after her.  She waved her whip to him, went on toward the house, and when she reached the top of the steps, she turned and waved to him again, but he made no answering gesture, and only when the front door closed behind her, did the boy waken from his trance and jog slowly up the road.  Only the rim of the red fire-ball was arched over the horizon behind him now.  Winter dusk was engulfing the fields and through it belated crows were scurrying silently for protecting woods.  For a little while Jason rode with his hands folded man-wise on the pommel of his saddle and with manlike emotions in his heart, for, while the mountains still beckoned, this land had somehow grown more friendly and there was a curious something after all that he would leave behind.  What it was he hardly knew; but a pair of blue eyes, misty with mysterious tears, had sown memories in his confused brain that he would not soon lose.  He did not forget the contempt that had blazed from those eyes, but he wondered now