The journey which began, thus, with calls on her four-footed friends,
was solitary, afterward, although in the narrow road-bed, here and
there, she saw impressions of preceding footsteps, big and deep. They
aroused her curiosity, and with keen instinct of the woods she studied
one of them elaborately. Rising from her pondering above it she decided
that Joe Lorey had gone on before her, and wondered what could possibly
have sent him down the trail so early in the morning. When she noted
that his trail turned off at the cross-roads which might lead to
Layson's camp (or other places) her heart sank for a moment. She
realized how bitterly the mountaineer felt toward the bluegrass youth
whom he considered his successful rival and she hoped that trouble would
not come of it. She did not love Joe Lorey as he wished to have her love
him, but she had a very real affection for him, none the less.
And--and--she did--she did--she _did_--this morning she acknowledged
it!--love Layson. The matter worried her, somewhat. Trouble between the
men was more than possible, she knew; but, on reflection, she decided
that Joe had not been bound for Layson's camp, but, by a short cut, to
the distant valley. This alone would have explained his very early
start. He was not one to seek to take his enemy while sleeping, and she
knew and knew he knew that the lowlander slept late. Lorey would not do
a thing dishonorable. She put the thought of trouble that day from her,
therefore, yielding gladly to the joyous and absorbing magic of the
growing, splendid morning.

The rising sun, with its ever changing spectacle, exhilerating,
splendid, awe-inspiring, there among the mountains, raised her spirits
as she travelled, and drove gloomy thoughts away as it drove off the
brooding mists which clung persistently, tearing themselves to tattered
ribbons ere they would loose their hold upon the peaks beyond the valley
and behind her.