Yesterday, though, as she walked back from the meeting on the ridge it had seemed as if she had spent a moment in that languourous land where the far mists drouse,—and yet the glamour had not faded. She hadn't sought to analyze then, she had only felt a new thrill in her heart as she instinctively broke clusters of pink-hearted bloom from the laurel.
She left the woods after a while and as she came out again to the high road, she heard a voice raised in the high-pitched, almost falsetto, minors of mountain minstrelsy.
It was not a pleasing voice, nor was the ballad a cheery one. As for the singer himself, the twisting of the way still concealed him from view, so that his song proclaimed him like a herald in advance.
"He stobbed her to ther heart an' she fell with a groan.
He threw a leetle dirt ov-er her, an' started fer home,"
wailed the dolorous voice of the traveler. There was a splashing of hoofs in shallow water, then a continuation
"His debt ter ther devil now William must pay,
Fer he fell down an' died afore break of day."
Thus announced, a mule plodded shortly into sight, and upon his back, perching sidewise, sat a tow-headed lout of a boy with staring, vacant eyes and a mouth which hung open, even when he desisted from song.
With an access of callow diffidence he halted his mount at sight of Blossom, staring with a nod and a bashful "Howdy."