He made for her a seat of pine boughs and moss, and once, when the early morning was chill, he built a campfire, and they sat beside it joying in the sweet, resinous smoke. Sometimes they walked a little way through the forest together, and always she was startled at her own blindness and ignorance, for every broken twig, every well-nigh invisible footprint on the loamy soil had a message for him. He knew the habits of the wild creatures, the identity of each plant, even the tiny herbs which she could not discover until he picked them for her. Then sometimes he told her their Indian names and uses. When he had been stationed at Fort Pickering, he had lived much amongst the Chickasaws and come to know their ways. When a blue jay chattered at them he made her smile with a Chickasaw legend about the impudent bird, or he told her the story of the battle between red squirrel and weasel.

She listened eagerly, her eyes fixed on him with worshiping admiration. But it would have been the same had he wished to expound theology or teach her Chinese. For nature itself, beyond a romantic response to scenery, meant little to her.

Bit by bit she drew him on to tell her of his life. And this was hard for him. He had never talked about himself. Yet his taciturnity melted under her fascinated interest.

He had been born in Albemarle County, Virginia, twenty-eight years ago in a log house that clung sturdily to the lower slopes of the Blue Ridges. The wilderness pressed around them, and his earliest memories were of the heart-cracking struggle to maintain their little plantation against its encroachments. His people were gentry, had owned slaves and been fairly prosperous, until his father died when Meme was four. Then the widow Lewis had had a hard time. They grew very poor.

'One winter, I remember, we had naught to eat except the rabbits and'possums that I snared. We got so lean, Mother and I, that our bones were like to rattle together.'

He gave one of his rare laughs at Theo's expression of horror.

'There are worse things than an empty belly, my dear one. You would know nothing of that, though.'

He paused, struck by his own words. How wide was the gap between them! She knew nothing of struggle or hardship. She had never felt hunger, thirst, or the clean, wit-sharpening fear of tangible danger. Impossible to imagine her raising a musket against looters, or braving a mountain blizzard as his mother had done many times.

'Yes—and what happened then? Did your circumstances not improve?' she urged.

'For a while they did. When I was ten, Mother married John Marks, a fine man. I liked him well enough, and our situation was much better, and yet there were matters——'