“There you are,” Archibald summed up triumphantly. “Of course I don’t need any one else to see to me now, and I’m not going to have anybody, and nobody could ever take your place; but when you do go away to school and to Europe and all that, you’d rather have me married to somebody than leave me all at loose ends, now wouldn’t you?”
Pegeen performed one of her amazing about-face movements.
“You’d have to be married,” she said firmly. “I wouldn’t budge a step, unless you were.”
Archibald laughed.
“Well, then, that’s all right; but there’s no use bothering about it as long as you and I can be together; and there’s small chance of my marrying at all, Pegeen.”
The laughter had died out of him and he stood looking down the Valley with eyes that did not see the meadows or the distant hills.
“You see, it’s this way, Peg. I can’t have the girl I want and there’s no other.”
There was pain in his voice and Pegeen slipped a small hand into his. Not a word did she say; but the grip of the little brown hand and the sympathy in the great eyes were comforting things. He shook off the blue devils and smiled down at her.
“So that’s how it is, Pegeen—and now I’m going to the blacksmith’s.”
Down in Pisgah, he found public opinion, as represented by the men loafing about the smithy, in a ferment. There had been another barn burning during the previous night and, though the value of the property destroyed had been small, the fire seemed to have been the proverbial last straw. Some of the bolder and younger spirits of the community were outspoken in their determination to defy the law and take the matter into their own hands.