Noiselessly the boy made his way through the edge of the woods, out under the brow of a hill, and went on his restless way up the bank of the creek toward Steve’s home.  When he turned toward the turnpike he found that he had passed the house a quarter of a mile, so he wheeled back down the creek, and where the mouth of the lane opened from the road he dropped in a spot of sunlight on the crest of a little cliff, his legs weary but his brain still tirelessly at work.  These people of the Blue-grass were not only robbing him and his people of their lands, but of their political birthright as well.  The fact that the farmer was on his side but helped make the boy know it was truth, and the resentments that were always burning like a bed of coals deep within him sprang into flames again.  The shadows lengthened swiftly about him and closed over him, and then the air grew chill.  Abruptly he rose and stood rigid, for far up the lane, and coming over a little hill, he saw the figure of a man leading a black horse and by his side the figure of a woman—­both visible for a moment before they disappeared behind the bushes that lined the lane.  When they were visible again Jason saw that they were a boy and girl, and when they once more came into view at a bend of the lane and stopped he saw that the girl, with her face downcast, was Mavis.  While they stood the boy suddenly put his arm around her, but she eluded him and fled to the fence, and with a laugh he climbed on his horse and came down the lane.  In a burning rage Jason started to slide down the cliff and pull the intruder, whoever he was, from his horse, and then he saw Mavis, going swiftly through the fields, turn and wave her hand.  That stopped him still—­he could not punish where there was apparently no offence—­so with sullen eyes he watched the mouth of the lane give up a tall lad on a black thoroughbred, his hat in his hand and his handsome face still laughing and still turned for another glimpse of the girl.  Another hand-wave came from Mavis at the edge of the woods, and glowering Jason stood in full view unseen and watched Gray Pendleton go thundering past him down the road.

Mavis had not gone to see Marjorie—­she had sneaked away to meet Gray; his lips curled contemptuously—­Mavis was a sneak, and so was Gray Pendleton.  Then a thought struck him—­why was Mavis behaving like a brush-girl this way, and why didn’t Gray go to see her in her own home, open and above-board, like a man?  The curl of the boy’s lips settled into a straight, grim line, and once more he turned slowly down the stream that he might approach Steve’s house from another direction.  Half an hour later, when he climbed the turnpike fence, he heard the gallop of iron-shod feet and he saw bearing down on him an iron-gray horse.  It was Marjorie.  He knew her from afar; he gripped the rail beneath him with both hands and his heart seemed almost to stop.  She was looking him full in the face now, and then, with a nod and a smile she would have given a beggar or a tramp, she swept him by.