Fult paused a moment before answering, deliberately: "I allow one or t'other of us will have to die before there's any lasting peace."
"Oh, why?" exclaimed Isabel; "why keep up the enmity and hatred? Why not let it die out forever?"
Fult was gazing straight ahead with drawn brows at a spot in the road.
"It hain't possible," he said, in a low voice. "But I can't talk about hit—never could, not even to my best friend, Charlie Lee. The onliest way is for me to keep hit all pinned right down inside me."
Suddenly he put out a hand, seized Isabel's bridle, and turned both the nags sharply aside into the creek.
"Right there, in the road," he said, in a choked voice, "is where they kilt my paw—come on him unexpected from them spruce-pines. I allus turn out of the road here."
"Oh, horrible!" exclaimed Isabel. "Oh, what you must have suffered! Can you forgive me for speaking lightly as I did about the war? For speaking of it at all? I can hardly forgive myself!"
Her blue eyes gazed insistently into his dark ones.
He was silent a moment. Then he said, gently: "Hit's all right." Then, in a still lower, deeper voice: "If there was anybody I could talk to about hit, hit would be you."
The color sprang into Isabel's face as she replied: "Oh, I'm only a stranger; I couldn't expect you to."