ye?” he said quietly, and his captors, thinking perhaps that he wanted to say something to me, stopped. The mountain youth turned a strangely sobered face and fixed his blue eyes on the engineer as though he were searing every feature of that imperturbable young man in his brain forever. It was not a bad face, but the avenging hatred in it was fearful. Then he, too, saw the Blight, his face calmed magically and he, too, stared at her, and turned away with an oath checked at his lips. We went on—the Blight thrilled, for she had heard much of our volunteer force at the Gap and had seen something already. Presently I looked back. Prisoner and captors were climbing the little hill toward the calaboose and the mountain boy just then turned his head and I could swear that his eyes sought not the engineer, whom we left at the corner, but, like the engineer, he was looking at the Blight. Whereat I did not wonder—particularly as to the engineer. He had been in the mountains for a long time and I knew what this vision from home meant to him. He turned up at the house quite early that night.     

       “I'm not on duty until eleven,” he said hesitantly, “and I thought I'd——”      

       “Come right in.”      

       I asked him a few questions about business and then I left him and the Blight alone. When I came back she had a Gatling gun of eager questions ranged on him and—happy withal—he was squirming no little. I followed him to the gate.     

       “Are you really going over into those God-forsaken mountains?” he asked.     

       “I thought I would.”      

       “And you are going to take HER?”      

       “And my sister.”      

       “Oh, I beg your pardon.” He strode away.     

       “Coming up by the mines?” he called back.     

       “Perhaps will you show us around?”      

       “I guess I will,” he said emphatically, and he went on to risk his neck on a ten-mile ride along a mountain road in the dark.     

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