Soon they went down to supper, and Mavis put out a shy hand to Marjorie’s mother, a kind-eyed, smiling woman in black.  And Gray, too, was there, watching the little mountain girl and smiling encouragement whenever he met her eyes.  And Mavis passed muster well, for the mountaineer’s sensitiveness makes him wary of his manners when he is among strange people, and he will go hungry rather than be guilty unknowingly of a possible breach.  Marjorie’s mother was much interested and pleased with Mavis, and she made up her mind at once to discuss with her daughter how they could best help along the little stranger.  After supper Marjorie played on the piano, and she and Gray sang duets, but the music was foreign to Mavis, and she did not like it very much.  When the two went upstairs, there was a dainty long garment spread on Mavis’s bed, which Mavis fingered carefully with much interest and much curiosity until she recalled suddenly what Marjorie had said about Gray carrying her “things.”  This was one of these things, and Mavis put it on wondering what the other things might be.  Then she saw that a silver-backed comb and brush had appeared on the bureau along with a tiny pair of scissors and a little ivory stick, the use of which she could not make out at all.  But she asked no questions, and when Marjorie came in with a new toothbrush and a little tin box and put them in the bath-room, Mavis still showed no surprise, but ran her eyes down the nightgown with its dainty ribbons.

“Ain’t it purty?” she said, and her voice and her eyes spoke all her thanks with such sincerity and pathos that Marjorie was touched.  Then they sat down in front of the fire—­a pair of slim brown feet that had been bruised by many a stone and pierced by many a thorn stretched out to a warm blaze side by side with a pair of white slim ones that had been tenderly guarded against both since the first day they had touched the earth, and a golden head that had never been without the caress of a tender hand and a tousled dark one that had been bared to sun and wind and storm—­ close together for a long time.  Unconsciously Marjorie had Mavis tell her much about Jason, just as Mavis without knowing it had Marjorie tell her much about Gray.  Mavis got the first good-night kiss of her life that night, and she went to bed thinking of the Blue-grass boy’s watchful eyes, little courtesies, and his sympathetic smile, just as Gray, riding home, was thinking of the dark, shy little mountain girl with a warm glow of protection about his heart, and Marjorie fell asleep dreaming of the mountain boy who, under her promise, had gone back homeless to his hills.  In them perhaps it was the call of the woods and wilds that had led their pioneer forefathers long, long ago into woods and wilds, or perhaps, after all, it was only the little blind god shooting arrows at them in the dark.

At least with little Jason one arrow had gone home.  At the forks of the road beyond the county-seat he turned not toward his grandfather’s, but up the spur and over the mountain.  And St. Hilda, sitting on her porch, saw him coming again.  His face looked beaten but determined, and he strode toward her as straight and sturdy as ever.