He ate for a time in dour silence before he turned harshly on 'Lindy.
"You ain't havin' no truck with Dave Roush are you? Not meetin' up with him on the sly?" he demanded, his deep-set eyes full of menace under the heavy, grizzled brows.
"No, I ain't," retorted the girl, and her voice was sullen and defiant.
"See you don't, lessen yo' want me to tickle yore back with the bud again. I don't allow to put up with no foolishness." He turned in explanation to the boy. "Brad Nickson seen him this side of the river to-day. He says this ain't the fustest time Roush has been seen hangin' 'round the cove."
The boy's wooden face betrayed nothing. He did not look at his sister. But suspicions began to troop through his mind. He thought again of the voices he had heard by the river and he remembered that it had become a habit of the girl to disappear for hours in the afternoon.
'Lindy went to her room early. She nursed against her father not only resentment, but a strong feeling of injustice. He would not let her attend the frolics of the neighborhood because of his scruples against dancing. Yet she had heard him tell how he used to dance till daybreak when he was a young man. What right had he to cut her off from the things that made life tolerable?
She was the heritor of lawless, self-willed, passionate ancestors. Their turbulent blood beat in her veins. All the safeguards that should have hedged her were gone. A wise mother, an understanding father, could have saved her from the tragedy waiting to engulf her. But she had neither of these. Instead, her father's inhibitions pushed her toward that doom to which she was moving blindfold.
Before her cracked mirror the girl dressed herself bravely in her cheap best. She had no joy in the thing she was going to do. Of her love she was not sure and of her lover very unsure. A bell of warning rang faintly in her heart as she waited for the hours to slip away.
A very little would have turned the tide. But she nursed her anger against her father, fed her resentment with the memory of all his wrongs to her. When at last she crept through the window to the dark porch trellised with wild cucumbers, she persuaded herself that she was going only to tell Dave Roush that she would not join him.
Her heart beat fast with excitement and dread. Poor, undisciplined daughter of the hills though she was, a rumor of the future whispered in her ears and weighted her bosom.