changing from violet to gray as the shadows rose or fell. Around
them the unploughed wasteland swept clear to the distant road,
which wound like a muddy river beside the naked tobacco fields.
Lying within the slight depression of a hilltop, the two were
buried deep amid the lifeeverlasting, which shed its soft dust
upon them and filled their nostrils with its ghostly fragrance.

As he went on, Christopher found a savage delight in mocking the
refinements of the boy's language, in tossing him coarse
expressions and brutal oaths much as he tossed scraps to the
hounds, in touching with vulgar scorn all the conventional ideals
of the household--obedience, duty, family affection, religion
even. While he sank still lower in that defiant self-respect to
which he had always clung doggedly until to-day, there was a
fierce satisfaction in the knowledge that as he fell he dragged
Will Fletcher with him--that he had sold himself to the devil and
got his price.

This unholy joy was still possessing him when at nightfall,
exhausted, dirty, brier-scratched, and bearing their strings of
game, they reached Tom Spade's, and Christopher demanded raw
whisky in the little room behind the store. Sol Peterkin was
there, astride his barrel, and as they entered he gave breath to
a low whistle of astonishment.

"Why, your grandpa's been sweepin' up the county for you!" he
exclaimed to Will.

"So he's found out I wasn't at the Morrisons'," said the boy a
little nervously. "I'd better be going home, I reckon, and get it