Where the trail bent over a knoll, Zeke halted, and put down from his shoulder the hickory cudgel with its dangling valise of black oilcloth—total of baggage with which he was faring forth into the world. Then, he straightened himself, and looked back over the way he had come.

There, to the east, the dusk of night still lay somberly, hardly touched by the coming dawn. Through the shadows, the mountain masses loomed formidable and mysterious, vaguely outlined against the deeper gloom of valleys. The melancholy of the scene seemed a fit setting for the cottage that rested invisible within the forest, a half-mile distant from him. In imagination, he saw the withered old woman, his mother, still standing on the threshold, looking toward him, even as he looked toward her, 2 her heart warm with love, her every thought a prayer for his happiness. It was borne in on Zeke once again that she would be very lonely in her desolate home, where death had spared to her only this son.... And, now, he was gone from her! A poignant sorrow welled in him.

Zeke thrust the emotion away, lest it unman him. He faced about, drearily enough, and stood with downcast, unseeing eyes, in anxious pondering. And then, presently, assuagement was granted him. He lifted his gaze, and behold! here was another world, all of soft splendors, of throbbing radiance.

The eager beams of the unrisen sun shimmered above the mountain ranges of the horizon, and streamed toward the zenith in a panoply of harmonious hues, colorful promise of the May morning’s joyous mood. Of a sudden, under the soothing influence, the watcher became listener as well. His ears noted with delight the glad singing of the birds in the wood around about. His glance caught the white gleam of the tiny belled blossoms that clustered on a crooked sour-wood by the path, and the penetrant perfume of them stirred to life a new and subtler emotion. A flame of tenderness burned in the clear hazel of his eyes, as he stared out over the trail before him. Under the increasing light his gaze could distinguish the line of the valley a mile further on, in which the Siddon cottage lay 3 hidden. His firmly-set lips relaxed abruptly into a smile of wistful softness. He swung stick and bag across his shoulder once again, and set off briskly down the slope of the knoll. His thoughts were no longer gray over the mother who mourned his going: they were roseate with anticipations of beholding the girl he loved. Now, the mood of the morning danced in his blood. The palpitant desire of all nature in the spring thrilled through his heart. His mind was filled with a vision of her gracious young loveliness, so soon to be present before him at their meeting.... Their meeting—their parting! At thought of that corollary, a cold despair clutched the lad, a despair that was nothing like the sedate sorrow over leaving his mother, a despair that was physical sickness, wrenching, nauseating, but passed beyond the physical to rack the deeps of being. For the first time, jealousy surged hideous in him, born of the realization that she must be left exposed to the wooing of other men—she, the utterly desirable! In a fierce impulse of mingled fear and rage, he stopped short, and cried out:

“I’ll be damned if they kin steal her! She’s mine. She done told me so, and Plutiny wouldn’t lie!”

From an ambush of laurel bushes close beside the path, a tall, slender form stood forth, the lissome figure of a girl in the budding charm of womanhood. 4 There was a lithe, curving beauty in the lines that the scant homespun gown outlined so clearly. The swift movement by which she revealed herself was instinct with grace. As she rested motionless, with arms extended in a gesture of appeal, there was a singular dignity in the pose, a distinction of personality that was in no wise marred by bare feet and shapeless gown; not even by the uncouthness of dialect, when she spoke. And winsomeness of form and bearing was crowned by the beauty of her face, in which the insipidity of regular features was redeemed by exquisite coloring of rose and white, and by the dusk brilliance of the eyes. The tender lips were wreathed to playful reproach, as she addressed the lover for whom she thus waited at the dawn:

“Zekie—oh, Zekie! Ye hain’t a-cussin’ o’ me, be ye?”

The young man, surprised, started, and regarded the girl in confusion. The red that had suffused his tanned cheeks deepened to a burning blush of embarrassment, as he realized that his outburst had been overheard by her who had been the cause of it. But his eyes met her quizzical glance with candid directness. After a moment, he spoke. All the harshness was gone from his voice; its soft drawl was vibrant with tenderness.

“No, Honey, I hain’t a’cussin’ o’ you-all. I was 5 jest a-mentionin’ some folks. But I hain’t a-feared. Nobody hain’t a-goin’ to steal yer love from me.”

“Nobody—never, Zeke!” the girl answered, simply. There was an infinite honesty, an unalterable loyalty, in the curt words.

As he listened, the flush died from the lover’s face; contentment shone in his expression.

“I knowed hit, Honey—I knowed hit all the time. I know when I come back I’ll find ye waitin’.”

“Ye’ll come back, I reckon, with fool idees ’bout what yer women-folks ought to wear, like them furriners down below.” Her face relaxed into a genial smile, which brought a dimple to shadow the pink bloom of her cheek. But there was a trace of pensiveness; the vague hint of jealousy in the slow tones:

“Yes, I’ll be a-waitin’ till ye come, Zekie. An’ if the wearin’ o’ shoes an’ stockin’s ’ll make ye any happier, why, I guess I kin stand ’em—an’ them ladies’ straighteners, too. Yep, I’d wear ’em, if they did squeeze me fit to bust.”

Since Plutina had thus come to meet him, there was no need that he should follow further the trail toward the Siddon cabin, which lay out of his course. At the girl’s suggestion that she should accompany him a little way on the first stage of his journey out into the world, the two turned back toward the broader path, which led to the southwest 6 until it met the North Wilkesboro’ road. The two walked side by side, along this lovers’ lane of nature’s kindly devising. They went sedately, in all seeming, for the mountain folk are chary in demonstrations of affection. Yet, beneath the austere mask imposed by convention, their hearts were thrilling with the rapture each found in the near presence of the other. The glamour of romance was like a golden mist over all the scene, irradiating each leaf and flower, softening the bird-calls to fairy flutings, draping the nakedness of distant rugged peaks, bearing gently the purling of the limpid brook along which the path ran in devious complacence. Often, indeed, the lovers’ way led them into the shallows, through which their bare feet splashed unconcerned. The occasional prismatic flash of a leaping trout in the deeper pools caught their eyes. So, presently, the girl was moved to speak—with visible effort, very shyly, for the expression of her love in words was a thing unfamiliar, difficult.

“I sha’n’t have nobody to make flies fer now,” she said dully. “I jest hain’t a-goin’ arter the trout fer fun no more till ye comes back.”

Zeke would have answered, but he checked the words at his lips, lest the trembling of his voice might betray a feeling deemed inconsistent with manliness. They went forward in silence, a-quiver 7 with desire each of the other, yet mute with the forced repression of custom. Now, too, the sorrow of the parting so close at hand, colored their mood more and more, so that the golden glamour first dimmed and then changed into a sinister pall which overhung all the loveliness of the morning. At a turn in the path, where it topped a rise, before descending a long slope to the highway, Zeke came to a standstill. The girl paused obediently beside him. He fumbled in a pocket awkwardly, and drew forth a tiny square of coffee-colored stone, roughly lined, which he held out toward his companion. The tracery of the crystal formed a Maltese cross. The girl expressed no surprise. She accepted the token with a grave nod as he dropped it into her palm, and she remained gazing down at it with eyes hidden under the heavy white lids and long, curving lashes of shadowy brown.

Zeke spoke, very earnestly:

“Hit’s fer good luck, Tiny—fer good luck to he’p ye while we’re apart. Mebby, hit ’ll git in hits work by softenin’ the hardness o’ yer gran’pap’s heart agin me.”

In truth, the concentration of his thought on the fragment of stone had been enough of itself to give a talisman occult potence. That concentration of desire for the girl’s well-being was not merely of this moment. It had been with him constantly during 8 long hours of tedious clambering yesterday, when he followed the channel of Garden Creek through its tortuous course among the ravines of the Blue Ridge, through the narrow defile of the Devil’s Garden, sunless, strewn with rubble of boulders, with a chaos of shattered rock masses—dÉbris, superstition said, of cataclysm—of the Crucifixion, when the mountain crests tore themselves asunder, and cast their pinnacles into the abyss for rage and grief. The searcher had climbed on and on, until he reached the nook sacred to the crystals. For concerning these, also, the superstition had its say, and told that the little pieces of stone, with the cross marked on each, were, in fact, the miraculously preserved tears shed by the fairies of these fastnesses in the dread hour of the Saviour’s anguish. The lover had sought long for a crystal that should be perfect. Now that it lay within the girl’s hand, he was content of his toil. Surely, whatever the truth concerning its origin, it was a holy thing, for the emblem it bore. It would serve to shield her against aught evil that might threaten—even the grandfather’s enmity against him, which set a barrier between them and happiness. The crystal would abide with her in sign of his love’s endurance, strong to save her and to cherish her against any ill. He sighed with relief, when she raised the crystal, and dropped it within her bosom. 9

Still, as always, fearful of showing emotion too openly, Zeke hastened to introduce a new topic. He took from a pocket a book of twelve two-cent postage stamps, to secure which he had trudged the four miles from his mother’s cabin to the Cherry Lane post-office. The book, in its turn, was proffered to Plutina, who accepted it in mild bewilderment.

The lover explained:

“Honey,” he said, without any embarrassment over the fact, “ye knows my ole mammy hain’t edicated, an’ I want ye to write for her once a month, arter I write to tell ye whar I’ll be.”

The girl nodded tacit acceptance of the trust, and consigned the stamps to a resting place alongside the crystal. And then, after a little, she spoke heavily:

“I reckon as how you-all better be a-joggin’, Zeke.”

For answer, the lad caught the girl in his arms, and gave her a kiss on either cheek—the hearty, noisy smacks of the mountaineer’s courting. But, in the next instant, he drew her close in an embrace that crushed the two warm bodies to rapture. His lips met hers, and clung, till their beings mingled. Afterward, he went from her voicelessly. Voicelessly, she let him go.... There could be no words to comfort the bitterness of such parting.