"Air ye plumb shore he hain't rid back?"
"He 'lowed he'd be back Satiddy—an' I hain't seen him pass by, so I reckon he warn't a-lyin'."
Newt sat watching a flock of geese that waddled down the gravel to the creek, and Hoover forbore to question him. After a space the boy rose, stretched his arms and legs, and succinctly announced, "Reckon I'll be a-startin' home." He did not know that men apportioned to that task by the Deacon watched and reported his going and coming, even to the words of the brief conversation at the wayside store. Sam Hoover, however, gave his information impartially, and the Deacon was duly informed.
Henry Falkins was riding along the gleaming white ribbon of turnpike near Winchester.
Over this land was brooding one of those days of rare charm that sometimes come to the bluegrass about the first of July. While the summer was yet young and while the gold-headed wheat was falling into rich shocks behind the binder blade, there had drifted into the heat a vagrant breath of Indian summer. The distances lay softened by a mistiness that clung like a haze of dreams. Into the air stole an insinuating freshness, which set the blood to a keener pulsing, and over the breast of the undulating soil hung an impalpable, but unescapable, mantle of romance.
The slim girl who sat her dancing saddle-mare with the easy grace of a daughter of generations of horsemen, felt it and glanced sidewise at the somewhat grave-faced young man by her side. He, too, felt it and drank in long drafts of the incensed air. He was as well mounted as herself, but his horsemanship lacked her instinctive freedom of poise. Henry Falkins, though much of his life had been spent in the saddle, had been reared to the ways of a country where men must ride rough and tortuous roads and rarely ride well. The horse of race-track and show-ring and hunting field were as alien there as the other bluegrass luxuries of wainscoted halls and silent servants and groaning tables and silver-surmounted sideboards.
Even now, athrill with the joy of the moment, Henry Falkins felt at the back of his mind an oppressive sense of the humorless and brooding hills, and the humorless and brooding men who peopled them.
They were turning between stone gate-posts into a driveway that led through shaded woodlands where thorough-bred dams grazed in sleek aristocracy with leggy colts capering at their sides. Beyond was the brick house, toned by its generations to an ancient richness, with its harping pine and cedar trees about it, and at the left its garden, giving a border of bright flower mosaic.
They had not been talking much. They were both happy enough to be silent together, but as they turned into the home place Lucinda raised sparkling eyes. He was riding close, and, as his horse swerved suddenly to the side of her own mount, she leaned impulsively toward him and let her gauntleted hand drop for a moment to his bridle arm, as she whispered happily: