At first he did not speak. Indeed, he did not speak at all until he had come with deliberate steps down to the stile, where he faced the visitor across the boundary fence, as a defending force might parley over a frontier. Then raising a long arm and a pointed finger down the road, he spoke the one word, "Begone!"
"I came to see Happy," said the visitor steadily. "I don't think she is nursing any grudge."
"No," the old fellow's eyes flashed dangerously; "women folks kin be too damn fergivin', I reckon. Hit war because she exacted a pledge from me to keep hands off thet I ever let matters slide in ther first place. I don't know what come ter pass. She hain't nuver told me—but I knows you broke her heart some fashion. Many a mountain war has done been started fer less."
Boone straightened a little and his chin came up, but still there was no resentment in his voice:
"Then I can't see your daughter—at your house? Will you tell her that I sought to?"
In a hard voice Cyrus answered: "No—ef she war hyar I wouldn't give her no message from ye whatsoever—but since she ain't hyar thet don't make no great differ."
"Where is she?"
"Thet's her business—and mine. Hit hain't none o' yourn—. An' now, begone!"
Boone turned on his heel and strode away, but it was only from other neighbours that he learned that a second school, similar to the one which the girl herself had attended, was being started some forty miles away in a district that had heard of the first, and had sent out the cry, "Come over into Macedonia and help us!"
To that school Happy had gone—this time as a teacher of the younger children.