Part 14

Sherd!

This time his name was uttered with an appeal ever so gentle.

Pore dad! Pore dad! " she whispered. Her clasp tightened suddenly on Clayton's hand, and her eyes were held to his, even while the light in them was going out.

A week later two men left the cabin at dusk.

Half-way down the slope they came to one of the unspeakably mournful little burying-grounds wherein the mountain people rest after their narrow lives. It was unhedged, uncared for, and a few crumbling boards for headstones told the living generation where the dead were at rest. For a moment they paused to look at a spot under a great beech where the earth had been lately disturbed.

"It air shorely hard to see," said one in a low, slow voice, "why she was taken, 'n1 him left; why she should hev to give her life fer the life he took. But He knows, He knows," the mountaineer continued, with unfaltering trust; and then, after a moment's struggle to reconcile fact with faith: "The Lord took whut He keered fer most, 'n' she was ready, 'n' he wasn t.

The other made no reply, and they kept on in silence. Upon a spur of the mountain beneath which the little mining-town had sunk to quiet for the night they parted with a hand-clasp. Not till then was the silence broken.

"Thar seems to be a penalty fer lovin' too ''much down hyar," said one; " 'n' I reckon," he added, slowly, "that both of us hev got hit to pay."

Turning, the speaker retraced his steps. The other kept on toward the lights below.