As Lescott looked at her, standing slight and willowy in the
thickening darkness, among the big-boned and slouching figures of the
clansmen, she seemed to shrink from the stature of a woman into that of
a child, and, as she felt his eyes on her, she timidly slipped farther
back into the shadowy door of the cabin, and dropped down on the sill,
where, with her hands clasped about her knees, she gazed curiously at
himself. She did not speak, but sat immovable with her thick hair
falling over her shoulders. The painter recognized that even the
interest in him as a new type could not for long keep her eyes from
being drawn to the face of Samson, where they lingered, and in that
magnetism he read, not the child, but the woman.

Samson was plainly restive from the moment of her arrival, and, when a
monosyllabic comment from the taciturn group threatened to reveal to
the girl the threatened outbreak of the feud, he went over to her, and
inquired:

"Sally, air ye skeered ter go home by yeself?"

As she met the boy's eyes, it was clear that her own held neither
nervousness nor fear, and yet there was something else in them--the
glint of invitation. She rose from her seat.

"I hain't ter say skeered," she told him, "but, ef ye wants ter walk
as fur as the stile, I hain't a-keerin'."

The youth rose, and, taking his hat and rifle, followed her.

Lescott was happily gifted with the power of facile adaptation, and he