He knew! "And why?" said he, his face blackening with bitter feeling, his brows contracting fiercely. "Because that furriner from the blue grass has come atween us!"
Madge, surprised that he should guess the secret which she had scarcely admitted, even to herself, was, for a second, frightened by his keenness. Had she shown her feelings with such freedom? But she quickly regained self-control and answered with a clever counterfeit of lightness. "Him? Oh, sho! He'd never think o' me that way!"
"Mebbe so," said Joe, "but I know you think more o' th' books he teaches you from than o' my company. From th' thickets borderin' th' clearin' where you've studied, I've watched you settin' thar with him, wen I'd give th' world to be thar in his place. Why, I'd ennymost gin up my life for one kiss, Madge!" He looked at her with pitiful love and longing in his eyes; but this soon changed to a sort of mad determination. "I'll have it, too!" he cried, advancing toward her.
She was amazed, not in the least dismayed. Indeed the episode took from the moment some of its emotional strain. That he should try to do this utterly unwarrantable thing took a portion of the weight of guilty feeling from her heart. It had been pressing heavily there. "You shan't!" she cried. "Careful, Joe Lorey!"
She eluded him with ease and ran across her little bridge. He paused, a second, in astonishment, and, as he paused, she grasped the rope and pulled the little draw up after her.
"Look out, Joe; it air a hundred feet, straight down!" she cried, as she saw that the baffled mountaineer was trembling on the chasm's edge, as if preparing for a spring. "Good night, Joe. Take my advice—gin up th' still, an' all thought of makin' a wife of a girl as ain't willin'."
Half laughing and half crying she ran up the path which wound about among the thickets on the rocky little island where her rough cabin stood, secure, secluded.
The mountaineer stood, baffled, on the brink of the ravine. Much loneliness among the mountains, where there was no voice but his own to listen to, had given him the habit of talking to himself in moments of excitement.
"Gone! Gone!" he said. "Gone laughin' at me!" He clenched his fists. "And it is him as has come atween us!" He turned slowly from the place, picked up his rifle, slung the game-sack, saggin with the weight of the dynamite, across his shoulder by its strap, and started from the place.
He had gone but a short distance, though, before he stopped, considering. Murder was in Joe Lorey's heart.