Meanwhile,the Blight was coming from her Northern home through the green lowlands of Jersey,the fat pastures of Maryland,and,as the white dresses of schoolgirls and the shining faces of darkies thickened at the stations,she knew that she was getting southward.All the way she was known and welcomed,and next morning she awoke with the keen air of the distant mountains in her nostrils and an expectant light in her happy eyes.At least the light was there when she stepped daintily from the dusty train and it leaped a little,Ifancied,when Marston,bronzed and flushed,held out his sunburnt hand.Like a convent girl she babbled questions to the little sister as the dummy puffed along and she bubbled like wine over the midsummer glory of the hills.And well she might,for the glory of the mountains,full-leafed,shrouded in evening shadows,blue-veiled in the distance,was unspeakable,and through the Gap the sun was sending his last rays as though he,too,meant to take a peep at her before he started around the world to welcome her next day.And she must know everything at once.The anniversary of the Great Day on which all men were pronounced free and equal was only ten days distant and preparations were going on.There would be a big crowd of mountaineers and there would be sports of all kinds,and games,but the tournament was to be the feature of the day.
"A tournament?''"Yes,a tournament,''repeated the little sister,and Marston was going to ride and the mean thing would not tell what mediaeval name he meant to take.And the Hon.Sam Budd--did the Blight remember him?(Indeed,she did)--had a "dark horse,''and he had bet heavily that his dark horse would win the tournament--whereat the little sister looked at Marston and at the Blight and smiled disdainfully.And the Wild Dog--DID she remember him?I checked the sister here with a glance,for Marston looked uncomfortable and the Blight saw me do it,and on the point of saying something she checked herself,and her face,Ithought,paled a little.
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.
Of such kind was the Blight.Every night when they came in I could read the story of the day,always in his face and sometimes in hers;and it was a series of ups and downs that must have wrung the boy's heart bloodless.Still I was in good hope for him,until the crisis came on the night before the Fourth.The quarrel was as plain as though typewritten on the face of each.Marston would not come in that night and the Blight went dinnerless to bed and cried herself to sleep.She told the little sister that she had seen the Wild Dog again peering through the bushes,and that she was frightened.That was her explanation--but I guessed a better one.
