He thrust the grant back into the pocket of Nate’s coat.  His resolve was routed by the presence of love and innocence.  Not here--not now could he be vindictive, malicious.  With some urgent, inborn impulse strongly constraining him, he caught the little sister in his arms, and fled headlong through the darkness, homeward.

As he went he was amazed that he should have contemplated this revenge.

“Why, I can’t afford ter be a scoundrel an’ sech, jes’ ’kase Nate Griggs air a tricky feller an’ hev fooled me.  Ef Tennessee hedn’t stepped up so powerful peart I moughtn’t hev come ter my senses in time.  I mought hev tore up Nate’s grant by now.  But arter this I ain’t never goin’ ter set out ter act like a scamp jes’ ’kase somebody else does.”

His conscience had prevailed, his better self returned.  And when he reached home, and opening the door saw his mother still nodding over her knitting, and Rufe asleep in his chair, and the fire smouldering on the hearth, all as he had left it, he might have thought that he had dreamed the temptation and his rescue, but for his dripping garments and Tennessee in his arms all soaking with the rain.

The noise of his entrance roused his mother, who stared in drowsy astonishment at the bedraggled apparition on the threshold.

“Tennie follered me ter the tanyard ’fore I fund her out,” Birt explained.  “It ’pears ter hev rained on her, considerable,” he added deprecatingly.

Tennie was looking eagerly over her shoulder to note the effect of this statement.  Her streaming hair flirted drops of water on the floor; her cheeks were ruddy; her black eyes brightened with apprehension.

“Waal, sir! that thar child beats all.  Never mind, Tennie, ye’ll meet up with a wild varmint some day when ye air follerin’ Birt off from the house, an’ I ain’t surprised none ef it eats ye!  But shucks!” Mrs. Dicey continued impersonally, “I mought ez well save my breath; Tennie ain’t feared o’ nuthin’, ef Birt air by.”

The word “varmint” seemed to recall something to Tennessee.  She began to chatter unintelligibly about an “owEL,” and to chuckle so, that Birt had sudden light upon that mysterious laugh which he had heard behind him at the bars.

In his pride in Tennessee he related how the owl had startled him, and the little girl, invisible in the darkness, had laughed.

“Tennessee ain’t pretty, I know, but she air powerful peart,” he said, affectionately, as he placed her upon her feet on the floor.

Birt was out early with his axe the next day.  The air was delightfully pure after the rain-storm; the sky, gradually becoming visible, wore the ideal azure; the freshened foliage seemed tinted anew.  And the morning was pierced by the gilded, glittering javelins of the sunrise, flung from over the misty eastern mountains.  As the day dawned all sylvan fascinations were alert in the woods.  The fragrant winds were garrulous with wild legends of piney gorges; of tumultuous cascades fringed by thyme and mint and ferns.  Every humble weed lent odorous suggestions.  The airy things all took to wing.  And the spider was a-weaving.