Peter, beginning to nose among the rocks, did not see the flash of fire that came slowly into the blue of the girl's eyes. She was looking at her ragged shoes, at the patched stockings, at the poverty of her faded dress, and her fingers clenched in her lap.
"I'd do it--I'd go away--somewhere--and never come back, if it wasn't for her," she breathed. "She treats me like a witch most of the time, but Jed Hawkins made her that way. I kin remember--"
Suddenly she jumped up, and flung back her head defiantly, so that her hair streamed out in a sun-filled cloud in a gust of wind that came up the valley.
"Some day, I'll kill 'im," she cried to the black forest across the plain. "Some day--I will!"
CHAPTER II
She followed Peter. For a long time the storm had been gathering in her brain, a sto
