"Don't ye say hit!" The defiance in her voice was being pathetically
tangled up with the tears. She was speaking in a transport of grief.
"Don't ye say hit. Take anybody else--take 'em all down thar, but leave
us Samson. We needs him hyar. We've jest got ter have Samson hyar."
She faced him still with quivering lips, but in another moment, with a
sudden sob, she dropped to the rock, and buried her face in her crossed
arms. Her slender body shook under a harrowing convulsion of
unhappiness. Lescott felt as though he had struck her; as though he had
ruthlessly blighted the irresponsible joyousness which had a few
minutes before sung from her lips with the blitheness of a mocking-
bird. He went over and softly laid a hand on her shoulder.
"Miss Sally--" he began.
She suddenly turned on him a tear-stained, infuriated face, stormy
with blazing eyes and wet cheeks and trembling lips.
"Don't touch me," she cried; "don't ye dare ter touch me! I hain't
nothin' but a gal--but I reckon I could 'most tear ye ter pieces. Ye're
jest a pizen snake, anyhow!" Then, she pointed a tremulous finger off
up the road. "Git away from hyar," she commanded. "I don't never want
ter see ye again. Ye're tryin' ter steal everything I loves. Git away,
I tells ye!--git away--begone!"
"Think it over," urged Lescott, quietly. "See if your heart doesn't
say I am Samson's friend--and yours." He turned, and began making his
way over the rocks; but, before he had gone far, he sat down to reflect
upon the situation. Certainly, he was not augmenting his popularity. A
half-hour later, he heard a rustle, and, turning, saw Sally standing
not far off. She was hesitating at the edge of the underbrush, and
Lescott read in her eyes the effort it was costing her to come forward
and apologize. Her cheeks were still pale and her eyes wet, but the
tempest of her anger had spent itself, and in the girl who stood
penitently, one hand nervously clutching a branch of rhododendron, one
foot twisting in the moss, Lescott was seeing an altogether new Sally.
There was a renunciation in her eyes that in contrast with the child-
like curve of her lips, and slim girlishness of her figure, seemed
entirely pathetic.
As she stood there, trying to come forward with a pitiful effort at
composure and a twisted smile, Lescott wanted to go and meet her. But
he knew her shyness, and realized that the kindest thing would be to
pretend that he had not seen her at all. So, he covertly watched her,
while he assumed to sit in moody unconsciousness of her nearness.