"Well—if ye won't go with me," she was saying, "I'll go with you. I'll go wherever they take you. What you suffer, I'll suffer, Lance; because the fault was mine—oh, the fault was mine!"
"We ain't got no time to talk about faults, honey," he said to her, slipping a caressing hand beneath her cheek, lifting the bent face, kissing her again and again, offering that demonstrative love for which Callista thirsted, which she had no initiative herself to proffer. "I'll not let you miscall my girl. I wouldn't have a hair of her head different. Come on, darlin', I've got to make good my word."
Strangely stilled as to her grief, Callista rose. She moved 388 silently about the cave and, without any further word of remonstrance, helped him gather his belongings together and make them ready. Lance himself was like a man for whom a new day has dawned. He was almost gay when they turned to take their farewell of the place that had been his home for weeks.
When they stepped forth, they found the sun fully risen upon a morning fair and promising. Callista looked long at the rock-house as, carrying their bundles, they passed it on the way to their mounts.
"And I had you for my own—all my own—and nobody to hinder—while we lived there," she said, speaking in a slow, wondering tone. "Oh, Lord! Foolish people have to learn hard when 'tis that they're blessed."
Lance's free arm went around her slight body and drew her close to his side as they walked. When they reached the animals, he loaded the bedding and other things carefully upon them, then turned to her.
"Sweetheart," he said, with that strange deep glow in his eyes, "folks that love each other like we do are blessed all the time, whether they're free and together—or separated—or in jail. They're blessed whether they're above ground or below it." He kissed her and lifted her lightly to Maje's back and they rode away.
As they followed down Caney and struck eastward toward the 389 Cleaverage place, the morning drew on, sweet and towardly. For all the cold, there was an under-note of Spring in the air. February felt the stirring of the year which had turned in its sleep. They rode together, hand in hand, where the trail permitted, both remembering—Lance with an added light in his eyes and a meaning smile, Callista with a sudden burst of tears—that other ride they had taken together. Lance's arm around her, her head on his shoulder, when they went down to Squire Ashe's to be married.
They traveled thus, in silence or with few words spoken, for nearly two hours. Their best road home would take them past the old Cleaverage place, and within a mile of the house. As they drew near this point something stirred down deep under Lance's quiet. His breath quickened, his face set in sharp lines. He suddenly strained Callista to him in a grasp that hurt, then released her, touched the patient Maje with his heel and pushed ahead at a good gait. Callista, watching him, followed drooping and mute. Moving so, swiftly and in single file they reached the place whence they could see the chimney of the Kimbro Cleaverage house through the trees, and were aware of a woman on a black horse, a child carried carefully in her arms, coming toward them. Callista lifted her hanging head and looked wonderingly around her husband.
"Why, I do believe that's Ola Derf on Cindy!" she said heavily. 390 "Is it? No, I reckon not."