As he made this explanation the newcomer was watching the face of his questioner almost eagerly. What he read there might spell the success or failure of his plans. Any enterprise across which Kinnard Towers stamped the word "prohibited" was an enterprise doomed to great vicissitude in a land where his word was often above the law.
But the blond and florid man granted him the satisfaction of no reply. He gazed pensively at the logs crackling on the hearth and his features were as inscrutably blank as those of the Sphinx.
After a moment Towers did speak, but it was to his host and on another topic.
"Lone," he said, "thet firewood of yourn's right green an' sappy, hain't it? Hit pops like ther fo'th of July."
Brother Fulkerson spoke reflectively: "We needs two more things then we've got in these hills—an' one thing less then we've got. We wants roads an' schools—and the end of makin' white licker."
Henderson saw Blossom slip from the bed and flit shadow-like through the door, and a few moments later he missed, too, the eagerly attentive presence of the boy. Blossom had escaped from the reek of tobacco smoke inside, to the soft cadences of the night-song and the silver wash of the moonlight.
Turner Stacy found her sitting, with her face between her palms, under a great oak that leaned out across the trickle of the creek, and when he spoke her name, she raised eyes glistening with tears.
"Blossom," he began in a contrite voice, "ye're mad at me, ain't ye? Ye've done heerd about—about last night." Then he added with moody self-accusation, "God knows I don't blame ye none."
She turned her head away and did not at once answer. Suddenly her throat choked and she broke into sobs that shook her with their violence. The young man stood rigid, his face drawn with self-hatred and at last she looked up at him.
"Somehow, Turner," she said unsteadily, "hit wouldn't of been jest ther same ef hit had been any other time. Yestiddy—up thar on ther ridge—ye promised me thet ye'd be heedful with licker."