“Jasie!” she called.

“Whut you want?”

“Jasie, take me back home with ye, won’t you?”

A rough denial was on his lips, but her voice broke into a little sob and the boy lay for a moment without answering.

“Whut on earth would you do down thar, Mavis?”

And then he remembered how he had told her that he would come for her some day, and he remembered the Hawn boast that a Hawn’s word was as good as his bond and he added kindly:  “Wait till mornin’, Mavis.  I’ll take ye if ye want to go.”

The door closed instantly and she was gone.  When the lad came down before day next morning Mavis had finished tying a few things in a bundle and was pushing it out of sight under a bed, and Jason knew what that meant.

“You hain’t told ’em?”

Mavis shook her head.

“Mebbe yo’ pap won’t let ye.”

“He ain’t hyeh,” said the little girl.

“Whar is he?”

“I don’t know.”

“Mavis,” said the boy seriously, “I’m a boy an’ hit don’t make no difference whar I go, but you’re a gal an’ hit looks like you ought to stay with yo’ daddy.”

The girl shook her head stubbornly, but he paid no attention.

“I tell ye, I’m a-goin’ back to that new-fangled school when I git to grandpap’s, an’ whut’ll you do?”

“I’ll go with ye.”

“I’ve thought o’ that,” said the boy patiently, “but they mought not have room fer neither one of us—­an’ I can take keer o’ myself anywhar.”

“Yes,” said the little girl proudly, “an’ I’ll trust ye to take keer o’ me—­anywhar.”

The boy looked at her long and hard, but there was no feminine cunning in her eyes—­nothing but simple trust—­and his silence was a despairing assent.  From the kitchen his mother called them to breakfast.

“Whar’s Steve?” asked the boy.

The mother gave the same answer as had Mavis, but she looked anxious and worried.

“Mavis is a-goin’ back to the mountains with me,” said the boy, and the girl looked up in defiant expectation, but the mother did not even look around from the stove.

“Mebbe yo’ pap won’t let ye,” she said quietly.

“How’s he goin’ to help hisself,” asked the girl, “when he ain’t hyeh?”

“He’ll blame me fer it, but I ain’t a-blamin’ you.”

The words surprised and puzzled both and touched both with sympathy and a little shame.  The mother looked at her son, opened her lips again, but closed them with a glance at Mavis that made her go out and leave them alone.

“Jasie,” she said then, “I reckon when Babe was a-playin’ ’possum in the bushes that day, he could ‘a’ shot ye when you run down the hill.”

She took his silence for assent and went on: 

“That shows he don’t hold no grudge agin you fer shootin’ at him.”

Still Jason was silent, and a line of stern justice straightened the woman’s lips.