That night I learned why--when she came in from the porch after Marston was gone.I saw she had wormed enough of the story out of him to worry her,for her face this time was distinctly pale.I would tell her no more than she knew,however,and then she said she was sure she had seen the Wild Dog herself that afternoon,sitting on his horse in the bushes near a station in Wildcat Valley.She was sure that he saw her,and his face had frightened her.I knew her fright was for Marston and not for herself,so I laughed at her fears.She was mistaken--Wild Dog was an outlaw now and he would not dare appear at the Gap,and there was no chance that he could harm her or Marston.
And yet I was uneasy.
It must have been a happy ten days for those two young people.Every afternoon Marston would come in from the mines and they would go off horseback together,over ground that I well knew--for I had been all over it myself--up through the gray-peaked rhododendron-bordered Gap with the swirling water below them and the gray rock high above where another such foolish lover lost his life,climbing to get a flower for his sweetheart,or down the winding dirt road into Lee,or up through the beech woods behind Imboden Hill,or climbing the spur of Morris's Farm to watch the sunset over the majestic Big Black Mountains,where the Wild Dog lived,and back through the fragrant,cool,moonlit woods.He was doing his best,Marston was,and he was having trouble --as every man should.And that trouble I knew even better than he,for I had once known a Southern girl who was so tender of heart that she could refuse no man who really loved her she accepted him and sent him to her father,who did all of her refusing for her.And I knew no man would know that he had won the Blight until he had her at the altar and the priestly hand of benediction was above her head.