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She leaped from the mare by Layson's side, and Neb, ever anxious for the welfare of his equine darling, began work without delay at rubbing Queen Bess down. "Reckon you'll never forgive me," Madge apologized to Layson, "but I just couldn't help it. Never even saw a mare like her, afore. My pony's no-whar alongside of her. I felt like an angel sittin' on a cloud an' sailin' straight to heaven!"
There might have been still greater compensation for her had she known that at the very moment when she peered out through the darkness, looking for some vagrant glimmer of a light from Layson's camp, he had, himself, just gone back to his cabin after having stood a long time staring through the darkness toward her own small cabin in its fastness. He was thinking, thinking, thinking.
He had not seen the youth before. Joe, half jealous, half contemptuous, of Layson's fine friends from the bluegrass, had kept out of their sight, although he had watched them furtively from covert almost constantly; and, it chanced, had not been so much as mentioned by either Frank or Madge while the party from the bluegrass lingered at the camp, save when Madge told the tragic story of her childhood while Holton stood aloof, for reasons of his own, hearing but imperfectly.
She could not reach the side of the endangered man to save him, she could not reach the mainland to pursue him and discover his identity. He fled. The girl was worried by the long delay in Layson's coming. For fully half an hour she had been listening for his cheery hail that hail which had, of late, come to mean so much to her as she worked about her household tasks.
You said you were dead sure he meant to make you his wife." She was still petulant, blaming him for Layson's unexpected lack of warmth. "Yes, but you needn't have interfered!" Holton was intensely puzzled, worried, almost frightened. He was as anxious to have this young man for a son-in-law as his daughter was to have him for a husband.
A fate was closing on Joe Lorey. The march of civilization was, indeed, advancing toward his mountain fastnesses at last. And nothing stays the march of civilization. The afternoon was waning as Joe climbed a sudden rise and saw before him Layson's camp. Through a cleft in the guardian range the sun's rays penetrated red and fiery.
It was she who showed the greatest disappointment about the general ignorance concerning Layson's whereabouts, and that voice made instantaneous and irresistible appeal to the older men among the party of engineers and surveyors, who, finding an excuse in her discomfiture, flocked about her, hats off, backs bent in humble bows, proffering assistance, three deep in the circle.
Then she crossed the room and stood close by her side, while she tapped upon the table nervously with her carefully gloved fingers. "If this sale fails, as it seems it must," she said, slowly, "it rests with you whether my father will advance the money to pay the assessment on that stock of Mr. Layson's." "Your father give him the money?" Madge said in astonishment.
Almost she made a detour by the road which led to Layson's camp to make quite sure that all was right with the young "foreigner," but this idea she abandoned as much because she felt that such a visit would necessitate an explanation which she would dislike to make, as because her many burdens would have made the way a long and difficult one to tread.
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