A sense of despair, quiet, numbing, was creeping over him.

''Tain't no reg'lar ail, I know,' he said to himself; 'but I b'lieve it'll kill me.'

Conversation in the mountains is a leisurely procedure, time being of little value. The ensuing pause, however, was of abnormal duration, and at last Amos was fain to break it, albeit irrelevantly.

'This hyar weather is gittin' mighty hot,' he observed, taking off his hat and fanning himself with it. 'I feel like I hed been dragged bodaciously through the hopper.'

From the shaded coolness of the grotto the girl admitted that it was 'middlin' warm.'

Despite the slumberous sunshine here, all the world was not so quiet. Over the valley a cloud was hovering, densely black, but with a grey, nebulous margin; now and then it was rent by a flash of lightning in swift zigzag lines, yet the mountains beyond were a tender blue in the golden glow of a sunshine yet more tender.

''Pears like they air gittin' a shower over yander, at the furder eend o' the cove,' Dorinda remarked encouragingly. 'Ef it war ter storm right smart, mebbe the thunder would cool the air some.'

'Mebbe so,' he assented.

Then he marked again the new beauty abloom in her face, and his heart sank within him. His pride was touched, too. He was a man well-to-do for the 'mountings,' with his own grist-mill, and a widowed mother whose plaint it was, night and day, that Amos was 'sech a slowly boy ter git married, an' the Lord knows thar oughter be somebody roun' the house spry'r 'n a pore old woman mighty nigh fifty year old—yes, sir! a-going on fifty. An' I want ter live down ter Emmert's Cove along o' Malviny, my married darter,' she would insist, 'whar thar air chillen, an' babies ter look arter, an' not sech a everlastin' gang o' men, a-lopin' 'round the mill. But I dunno what Amos would do ef I lef' him.'

Evidently it was a field for a daughter-in-law. Amos felt in his secret soul that this was not the only attraction. He was well favoured and tall and straight, and had a good name in the county, despite his pranks, which were leniently regarded. He honestly thought that Dorinda might do worse. Whether it was tact or whether it was delicacy, he did not allude to the worldly contrast with the fugitive from justice.