With no particular destination in view, it was only natural that his feet should find the familiar path leading up to the great boulder under the cedars. He had not visited the rock of the spring since the summer day when he and Nan Bryerson had taken refuge from the shower in the hollow heart of it, nor had he seen Nan since their parting at the door of her father's cabin under the cliff. Rumor in Gordonia had it that Tike Bryerson had been hunted out by the revenue officers; and, for reasons which he would have found it difficult to declare in words, Tom had been shy about making inquiries.
For this cause an apparition could scarcely have startled him more than did the sight of Nan filling her bucket at the trickling barrel-spring under the cliff face of the great rock. He came on her suddenly at the end of the long climb up the wooded slopes, at a moment when—semi-tropical growth having had two full seasons in which to change the natural aspect of things—he was half-bewildered with the unwonted look of the place. But there was no doubt about it; it was Nan in the flesh, a little fuller in the figure, something less childish in the face, but with all the fascinating, wild-creature beauty of the child-time promise to dazzle the eye and breed riot in the brain of the boy-man.
When she stood up with a little cry of pleased surprise, the dark eyes lighting quick joy-fires, and the welcoming blush mounting swiftly to neck and cheek, Tom thought she was the most alluring thing he had ever looked on. Yet the bottom stone in the wall of recrudescent admiration was the certainty that he had found a sympathetic ear.
"Did you know I was coming? Were you waiting for me, Nan?" he bubbled, gazing into the great black eyes as eagerly as a freed dog plunges into the first pool that offers.
"How could I be knowin' to it?" she asked, taking him seriously, or appearing to. "I nev' knowed school let out this time o' year."
"It's let out for me, Nan," he said meaningly. "I came home—for good—nearly three weeks ago. My mother has been sick. Didn't you hear of it?"
She shook her head gravely.
"I hain't been as far as Paradise sence paw and me moved back from Pine Knob, two months ago. I don't hear nothin' any more."
In times long past, Tom, valley-born and of superior clay, used to be scornful of the mountain dialect. Now, on Nan's lips, it charmed him. It was blessedly reminiscent of the care-free days of yore.
"Say, Nan; I hope you haven't got to hurry home," he interposed, when she stooped to lift the overflowing bucket. "I want to talk to you—to tell you something."