he had come nigh being killed. How a gentleman had helped her when the colt tried to run and the mule was mean, and how she had brought him home with her.

Then he lifted his head and looked at her, his haggard face drawn with suffering, and the calmness of her eyes still further soothed and comforted him. They were filled with big tears, and he knew the tears were for him, for the change which had come upon him, lonely and wretched, doomed to hide out on the mountain, his clothes torn by the brambles and soiled by the red clay of the holes into which he had crawled to hide himself. He rose and sat at her side and held her head on his shoulder with gentle hand.

“Pore little sister — pore little Cass! I been awful mean an’ bad,” he murmured. “Hit’s a badness I cyan’t