"Back to this wilderness," she scoffed; "any one
should thank God for being taken out of it."

"I've always lived here, my father too, and his
before him; and back of that we came from mountains.
We're mountain blood; I don't know if we
could get used to anything else, live down yonder."

"I'd civilize you," she promised him.

"Perhaps--" he assented slowly.

Suddenly from beyond the ruin came the stir
of a horse moving in harness, the sound stopped
and the voices of men grew audible. Instinctively
Gordon and Meta Beggs drew behind a standing
fragment of wall. Gordon could see, through the
displaced, rotting boards, a buggy and two men
standing at the side of the road. One, he recognized,
was Valentine Simmons; he easily made out
the small, alert figure. The other, with his back to
the mill, held outspread a sheet of paper. There
was something familiar about the carriage of the
head, a glimpse of beard, a cigar from which were
expelled copious volumes of smoke. Gordon vainly
racked his memory for a clue to the latter, elusive
personality. He heard Simmons say:

"...by the South Fork entrance... through
the valley."

The stranger partially turned, and Gordon instantly
recalled where he had seen him before -- it
was the man he had driven from Stenton with the

[[212]]

p211 _ -chap- _ toc-1 _ p212w _ toc-2 _ +chap+ _ p213

v?