IT was the evening of the following day. Ethel had heard of the return of Jeff Warren and was quite disturbed. Since early morning Paul had been away, and Ethel fancied that he was unaware of the arrival of the little family. In many ways she pitied Paul, and she gravely feared for his safety, for there was no mincing the fact that Jeff Warren was a most dangerous man, with a quick, uncontrollable temper. Mrs. Tilton, Mrs. Mayfield, Cato, and Aunt Dilly were all discussing the situation. That the two men would meet was not to be doubted; that Paul would have to defend himself or be injured was regarded as a certainty.

Ethel was at the window of her room just as the night began to fall, when Paul came in at the gate, and, with a weary step, advanced up the walk toward the house. Hoag was seated on the veranda, and Ethel heard the posts of his chair jar the floor as he rose and descended the steps. The two men met almost beneath her open window. Ethel was aware that their words might not be intended for other ears, and yet she was chained as by some weird and ominous spell to the spot. She dropped on her knees, leaned against the window-sill, and peered cautiously through the overhanging vines.

“Oh, yes, I heard he was here,” she caught Paul's reply to an obvious question, and she was sure there was an odd, changed tone in his voice which seemed to have lost its old hopeful vitality. She saw him take his handkerchief from his pocket and slowly wipe his brow as he stood with his dusk-draped profile toward her.

“Well, I just thought I'd put you on your guard,” Hoag was heard to say, with an unction of tone which men of his own type could have fathomed better than a delicate, frightened woman. “I'm sure I'd appreciate it to have a friend of mine come to me at such a ticklish time. I know you've got grit. I've seed it put to a test. That's why folks are a-talkin' at such a rate. The opinion of one an' all is that what you did once you can an' will do ag'in.”

Ethel held her breath to catch Paul's tardy words. His head was lowered when he spoke. “So they think I'll shoot him again, do they—they think that?”

“You bet they know you won't let the skunk run roughshod over you, an' he's ready an' waitin'—bought 'im a gun right off—looked all about for you to-day, I'm told, an' some say he hinted that you'd skipped clean out to keep from facin' the music. I haven't met him. I hain't no use for the puppy, an' never did have. You've got a gun, haven't you?”

“No, I haven't owned one since I got back from the West.”

“You don't say—well, you'd better git one. I've got three. You can take your pick if you want to, but for the Lord's sake don't mix me up in it. I just offer it to you as I would to any other man in my employ.”

“Thank you.” They were moving toward the house, and the roof of the veranda hid them from the eyes of the awed and frightened observer. Ethel heard Paul uttering some unintelligible words in the hall below, and then he came up the stairs and entered his own room. She stood in the center of the floor, trembling from head to foot. He had been such a wonderful friend to her; under his advice she had soared to heights she had never reached before, and yet now he himself, strong as he had been in her behalf, was in peril—peril he was too brave to see. She heard her uncle's ponderous step as he strode through the long hall to the kitchen, and then it occurred to her to pray for guidance. She sank down on the edge of her bed and folded her delicate hands between her tense knees. Her lips moved, but she was not conscious of the words mutely escaping her lips. Suddenly she sprang up and started to the door, for Paul had left his room and was going down the stairs with a firm and hurried stride. Her hand on the door-knob, she leaned out into the darkened hall and peered after him. She had an impulse to call to him, yet the thought that she had no excuse for stopping him which would not reveal the fact that she had been eavesdropping checked both her voice and movement. She heard him crossing the veranda swiftly, and, returning to the window, she saw him on the walk striding toward the gate. Again she tried to cry out to him, and again she failed. As he reached the gate and passed out into the road she prayed that he would go toward the village rather than toward the cabin in which his stepfather lived. Her breast seemed to turn to stone the next instant, for he was taking the shortest cut toward the cabin. How calmly, fearlessly, he moved! How erectly he walked, and it was perhaps to his death! Ethel staggered back to her bed, sank on it face downward, and began to sob, began to pray as only he had taught her to pray, with all her young soul bent to its holy purpose.

Paul strode on through the gloaming. Overhead arched the infinite symbol of endlessness, with here and there a twinkling gem of light. On either side of him the meadows and fields lay sleeping, damp with rising dew. Fireflies were flashing signals to their fellows; insects were snarling in the trees and grass; a donkey was braying in the far distance; dogs were barking.

As Paul approached Warren's cabin the firelight from within shone through the open door out upon the bare ground in front. He paused for a moment, undecided as to how he should make his presence known—whether he should call out from where he stood, after the manner of mountain folk, or approach the threshold and rap. Just then a bulky, top-heavy looking object turned the corner of the cabin and advanced to the wood-pile near by. It was a man carrying a bunch of fagots on his shoulder. He threw it down, and, seeing Paul for the first time, he drew himself erect, staring through the darkness.

“Who goes thar?” he grunted.

Paul was about to reply when Warren suddenly grasped the handle of an ax, and swiftly swinging it to one side as if ready to strike a blow, he panted: “Oh, it's you—is it? Well, I've been expectin' you all day. I knowed you'd hear I'd come, an' not lose time..Well, I hain't got no gun—my fool women folks took—”

“I haven't either, Jeff,” Paul laughed, appeasingly. “You've got the best of it this time; I'm at your mercy, and I'm glad of it. Turn about is fair play, and if you want to you can brain me with that ax. I really think I deserve it, Jeff. I've had seven years to regret what I did, and I don't want to lose a minute to tell you that I am sorry—sorry as ever a man was in this world.”

Silence fell. Warren leaned on his ax-handle and stared with wide eyes and parted lips. When he finally spoke his breath hissed through his teeth.

“Say, young feller, if you've come here to poke fun at me I tell you now you've—”

“I'm in no mood for that, Jeff,” Paul broke in, with increased gentleness. “I've done you a great injury. I was a silly boy at the time and I've sorely repented. I've come to beg your pardon—to beg it as humbly as I know how.”

“Good God! You—you say—you mean—”

“I'm sorry, that's all, Jeff. I want to see my mother. You've got more right to her than I have now, after my conduct, but I want to see her and ask her to forgive me, too. A man has but one mother, Jeff, and the time comes to all men when they know what it means to lose one. Is she in the house?” There was an awkward pause. Warren stood swaying like a human tree touched in every branch, twig, and leaf by clashing winds which had never so met before.

“Why, I thought—we thought—folks all thought”—Warren dropped his ax, made a movement as if to regain it, then drew his lank body erect, and stood staring through the gloom.

“I know,” Paul laughed softly and appealingly, “they think blood, and nothing but blood, can wash out a difference like ours; but there is a better way, Jeff, and that is through good-will. We've been enemies long enough. I want to be your friend. You've taken care of my mother and aunt all these years, and I am genuinely grateful for it.”

Warren turned his shattered countenance aside. “I didn't look for you to be this way at all—at all,” he faltered, huskily. “I reckon when I heard you was back here I got mad because you was makin' your way up so fast, and I've been steadily goin' down. The devil was in me, an' I thought he was in you, too. Lord, I never dreamt that you'd walk up like this to a—a—feller that—” Warren waved a dejected hand toward the cabin—“that had fetched your mammy to a pig-pen of a shack right in the neighborhood whar you are thought so much of.”

“A man doesn't deserve to be well thought of, Jeff, who considers himself better in any way than a less fortunate fellow-being. If you could really understand me you'd see that I actually think more of you than if you were well-to-do.”

“Oh, come off!” Warren sharply deprecated. “That's beyond reason. I used to be proud. In fact, I reckon that's what drawed me so much to your mother. I pitied her because your daddy made so little headway, but look at me now. Lord, Lord, jest look! Why, he was a king beside me. I've plumb lost my grip.”

“I see—I know what you mean,” Paul said, sympathetically, “but you are going to get it back, Jeff, and I'm going to do all I can to help. Is my mother in the house?”

“No; the calf got to the cow, an' the two wandered off somewhar. Your ma is down in the meadow close to the swamp tryin' to find 'em.”

“And my aunt?”

“Oh, Mandy—why, you see”—Jeff appeared to be embarrassed anew—“you see, Mrs. Tobe Williams, who lives over in town, driv' by this evenin' about an hour by sun, and—and said she'd had so much trouble gettin' a woman to—to cook for her big family o' children that, if Mandy wouldn't mind helpin' her out in a pinch, she would pay well for it. I put my foot down ag'in it, but Mandy wouldn't listen to reason, an' got in the buggy and went. It seemed to me that was my last straw. If killin' myself would aid anybody the least bit I'd gladly—”

Warren's voice broke, and he stood quivering from head to foot in the effort to control his emotion. Paul advanced and extended his hand. “We must be friends, Jeff,” he said, with feeling. “Between us, we can make both of them happy.”

“Between us! You say—”

Warren clasped the outstretched hand and clung to it as if for some sort of support in the strange new storm which was tossing him as he had never been tossed before.

“I can't make you out, Paul,” he fairly sobbed; “by God, I can't! Seems like you are foolin', an' then ag'in I know you ain't—yes, I know you ain't!”

“No, I'm in earnest,” Paul returned. “Do you think my mother will be back soon?”

“Yes; but you stay here an' let me step down whar she's at,” Warren proposed, considerately. “She ain't so well—in fact, she might get upset if—if she saw' you all of a sudden. I'll run down an'—an' tell her you are friendly. That'll be the main thing. She's been afraid you an' me would act the fool ag'in. She will be relieved and astonished. You wait here. I'll go tell 'er.”

When Warren had stalked away in the gloom Paul went to the cabin-door and glanced within. The pine-knots burning under the open fire of logs, the ends of which rested on stones, lighted the poor room, from which musty odors emerged, and he shuddered and turned away. Passing around the cabin, he approached the neat cottage near by. He went up on the little vine-clad porch and peered through the window's and side-lights of the door. Putting his hand into his pocket, he took out a key, and, thrusting it into the lock, he opened the door and entered. Striking a match, he held it above his head and went into all the rooms.