He looked at her and his eyes were aglow with softened fire, and his hand was near her own, resting on the log door-way, but he was not brave now for he trembled and when he spoke his voice wavered. "Don't mock me by calling me brave. There never was a bigger coward."
"Why, you are trembling now. Is it because I told you of the spirits? But you ain't a coward. My father says you are brave and he knows, for you wan't afraid of that mad dog, and there's nothin' as bad as that. Oh, down yonder where the branch is bigger there is a water fall; and after a rain it roars and I used to go there with little Bud and we called it a scolding giant. Shall we go down there?"
"Yes, but you mustn't—mustn't think of that boy Bud so much."
"Yes, but so is everything that is anything. Take the spirit away and we'd all be cattle. And I know exactly what species of cattle I'd be—I'd be a calf—just a red calf with horns about an inch long, and in nosing around I'd get a basket on my head, be frightened and make myself ridiculous. I never knew it before, but I know now that I'd be a calf."
"Oh, no you wouldn't, no such of a thing. What makes you talk about yourself that way? Come on, now."
Over a bluff of rock fifty feet high the rivulet poured and in the spray they saw a rainbow. Down below where they stood ferns were rank and the rocks were soft with moss. Here they sat and chatted of nothing but themselves, he discovering faults in himself and she denying them, calling him prettily to task for his slander, and thrilled him from one indecision to another. The sun, emblazoning for a moment a distant mountain top, purpled the lower world and then all was in shade. For a long time they had been silent and when she spoke he started out of his revery and rubbed his eyes as if he had been asleep; but he had not, for as a spirit, a little boy Bud, he had played with her in the gulch, coming out from beneath the rock when she called him.
"Let us go back to the house," she said. "They will wonder what has become of us."
Jim and Mrs. Mayfield were coming down the hill. The preacher, too, had for the most part been silent, though not in reverie, but in a constant struggle. Once he said to her: "Ma'm, I can't get it out of my head that you are makin' fun of me."
"I make fun of you, Mr. Reverend? I admit that in the past my heart was gayer than wise, but there never was a time when I could have made fun of you."