Day had not dawned when Madge awoke. The sun, indeed, had just begun to poke the red edge of his disc above Mount Nebo, when, having built her fire and cooked her frugal breakfast, she loosed the rope which held the crude, small draw-bridge up and lowered the rickety old platform until it gave a pathway over the deep chasm and carried her to the mainland, ready for the journey to the distant cross-roads store.
Dew, sparkling like cut diamonds, cool as melting ice, was everywhere in the brilliant freshness of the morning; the birds were busy with their gossip and their foraging, chattering greetings to her as she passed; in her pasture her cow, Sukey, had not risen yet from her comfortable night posture when she reached her. The animal looked up gravely at her, chewing calmly on her cud, plainly not approving, quite, of such a very early call. While the girl sat on the one-legged stool beside her, sending white, rich, fragrant streams into the resounding pail, her shaggy Little Hawss limped up, nosing at her pocket for a turnip, which he found, of course, abstracted cleverly and munched.
Having finished with the cow she set the milk in a fence-corner to wait for her return, and, when she left the lot, the pony followed her, making a difficult, limping way along the inside of the rough stump-fence until he came to a cross barrier. Then, as he saw that she was going on and leaving him behind, he nickered lonesomely, and, although she planned, that day to accomplish many, many things, and, in consequence, was greatly pressed for time, she went back to him and petted him a moment and then found another turnip for him in her pocket.
The journey which began, thus, with calls on her four-footed friends, was solitary, afterward, although in the narrow road-bed, here and there, she saw impressions of preceding footsteps, big and deep. They aroused her curiosity, and with keen instinct of the woods she studied one of them elaborately. Rising from her pondering above it she decided that Joe Lorey had gone on before her, and wondered what could possibly have sent him down the trail so early in the morning. When she noted that his trail turned off at the cross-roads which might lead to Layson's camp (or other places) her heart sank for a moment. She realized how bitterly the mountaineer felt toward the bluegrass youth whom he considered his successful rival and she hoped that trouble would not come of it. She did not love Joe Lorey as he wished to have her love him, but she had a very real affection for him, none the less. And—and—she did—she did—she did—this morning she acknowledged it!—love Layson. The matter worried her, somewhat. Trouble between the men was more than possible, she knew; but, on reflection, she decided that Joe had not been bound for Layson's camp, but, by a short cut, to the distant valley. This alone would have explained his very early start. He was not one to seek to take his enemy while sleeping, and she knew and knew he knew that the lowlander slept late. Lorey would not do a thing dishonorable. She put the thought of trouble that day from her, therefore, yielding gladly to the joyous and absorbing magic of the growing, splendid morning.
The rising sun, with its ever changing spectacle, exhilerating, splendid, awe-inspiring, there among the mountains, raised her spirits as she travelled, and drove gloomy thoughts away as it drove off the brooding mists which clung persistently, tearing themselves to tattered ribbons ere they would loose their hold upon the peaks beyond the valley and behind her.
A feeling of elation grew in her—elation born of her abounding health, fine youth, the glory of the scene, the high intoxication of first love.
She beguiled the way with mountain ballads, paused, here and there, to pluck some lovely flower, accumulating, presently, a nosegay so enormous as to be almost unwieldy, whistled to the birds and smiled as they sent back their answers, laughed at the fierce scolding of a squirrel on a limb, heard the doleful wailing of young foxes and crept near enough their burrow to see them huddled in the sand before it, waiting eagerly for their foraging mother and the breakfast she would bring.
When the trail crossed a clear brook she paused upon the crude, low bridge and watched the trout dart to and fro beneath it; where it debouched upon a hill-side of commanding view she stopped there, breathing hard from sheer enjoyment of the glory of the prospect spread before her in the valley.
She was very happy, as she almost always was of summer mornings. The mountain air, circulating in her young and sturdy lungs, was almost as intoxicating as strong wine and made the blood leap through her arteries, thrill through her veins.
The worries of the night before seemed, for a time, to have been groundless. She ceased to fear her meeting with the bluegrass gentlefolk and looked forward to it with real confidence and pleasure. Her confidence in Layson was abounding, and she assured herself till the thought became conviction that he never would permit her to subject herself to anything which properly could be humiliating.