“It’s only Chauncey Dike,” she said.

“Who’s Chauncey Dike?” I asked.

“He reckons he’s a buck,” was all that Polly Ann vouchsafed.

Chauncey drew near with a strut.  He had very long black hair, a new coonskin cap with a long tassel, and a new blue-fringed hunting shirt.  What first caught my eye was a couple of withered Indian scalps that hung by their long locks from his girdle.  Chauncey Dike was certainly handsome.

“Wal, Polly Ann, are ye tired of hanging out fer Tom?” he cried, when a dozen paces away.

“I wouldn’t be if you was the only one left ter choose,” Polly Ann retorted.

Chauncey Dike stopped in his tracks and haw-hawed with laughter.  But I could see that he was not very much pleased.

“Wal,” said he, “I ’low ye won’t see Tom very soon.  He’s gone to Kaintuckee.”

“Has he?” said Polly Ann, with brave indifference.

“He met a gal on the trail—­a blazin’ fine gal,” said Chauncey Dike.  “She was goin’ to Kaintuckee.  And Tom—­he ’lowed he’d go ’long.”

Polly Ann laughed, and fingered the withered pieces of skin at Chauncey’s girdle.

“Did Tom give you them sculps?” she asked innocently.

Chauncey drew up stiffly.

“Who?  Tom McChesney?  I reckon he ain’t got none to give.  This here’s from a big brave at Noewee, whar the Virginny boys was surprised.”  And he held up the one with the longest tuft.  “He’d liked to tomahawked me out’n the briers, but I throwed him fust.”

“Shucks,” said Polly Ann, pounding the corn, “I reckon you found him dead.”

But that night, as we sat before the fading red of the backlog, the old man dozing in his chair, Polly Ann put her hand on mine.

“Davy,” she said softly, “do you reckon he’s gone to Kaintuckee?”

How could I tell?

The days passed.  The wind grew colder, and one subdued dawn we awoke to find that the pines had fantastic white arms, and the stream ran black between white banks.  All that day, and for many days after, the snow added silently to the thickness of its blanket, and winter was upon us.  It was a long winter and a rare one.  Polly Ann sat by the little window of the cabin, spinning the flax into linsey-woolsey.  And she made a hunting shirt for her grandfather, and another little one for me which she fitted with careful fingers.  But as she spun, her wheel made the only music—­for Polly Ann sang no more.  Once I came on her as she was thrusting the tattered piece of birch bark into her gown, but she never spoke to me more of Tom McChesney.  When, from time to time, the snow melted on the hillsides, I sometimes surprised a deer there and shot him with the heavy rifle.  And so the months wore on till spring.