Neb, there, was another evidence of the great advantage, which, he began
to feel with hopeless rage, the man who had stolen that thing from him
which he prized most highly, had over him. The negro was his servant.
Servants meant prosperity, prosperity meant power. Backwoodsman as he
was, Joe Lorey knew that perfectly. His face gloomed in the twilight.

"Yes," he answered bitterly, "it's here he has been huntin'--huntin'
deer--the pootiest deer these mountings ever see." Of course the old
negro did not understand the man's allusion. He was puzzled by the
speech; but Joe went on without an explanation: "But thar is danger in
sech huntin'. Your young master, maybe, better keep a lookout for
his-self!"

His voice trembled with intensity.

In the meantime Layson was still seated thoughtfully before his fire of
crackling "down-wood," busy with a thousand speculations. Just what
Madge Brierly, the little mountain girl, meant to him, really, he could
not quite determine. He knew that he had been most powerfully attracted
to her, but he did not fail to recognize the incongruity of such a
situation. He had never been a youth of many love-affairs. Perhaps his
regard for horses and the "sport of kings" had kept him from much
travelling along the sentimental paths of dalliance with the fair sex.
Barbara Holton, back in the bluegrass country, had been almost the only
girl whom he had ever thought, seriously, of marrying, and he had not,
actually, spoken, yet, to her about it. When he had left the lowlands
for the mountains he had meant to, though, when he returned. There were
those, he thought, who believed them an affianced couple. Now he
wondered if they ever would be, really, and if, without actually
speaking, he had not led her to believe that he would speak. He was