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. 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?"