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She did not hear, amid the tumult of her weeping, the rustling of the boughs, but some subtle sense took cognizance of his presence. She half rose, and with one hand holding back her dense yellow hair, which had fallen forward on her forehead, she looked up at him fearfully, tremulously, with all the revolt of the corporeal creature for the essence of the mysterious incorporeal. For a moment he could not speak. So much he must needs explain. The next instant he was whelmed in the avalanche of her words.

“Te hev kem!” she exclaimed in a sort of shrill ecstasy. “Te hev kem so far ter hear the word that I would give my life ter hev said before. Te knowed it in heaven! an’ how like ye ter kem ter gin me the chanst ter say it at last! How like the good heart of ye, worth all the hearts on yearth–an’ buried hyar!”

With her open palm she smote the insensate clods with a gesture of despair. Then she went on in a rising tide of tumultuous emotion. “I love ye! Oh, I always loved ye! I never keered fur nobody else! an’ I war tongue-tied, an’ full of fool pride, an’ faultin’ ye fur yer ways; an’ I wouldn’t gin ye the word I knowed ye war wantin’ ter hear. But now I kin tell the pore ghost of ye–I kin tell the pore, pore ghost!”

She buried her swollen, tear-stained face in her hands, and shook her head to and fro with the realization of the futility of late repentance. As she once more lifted her eyes, she was obviously surprised to see him still standing there, and the crisis seemed to restore to him the faculty of speech.

“Minta Elladine,” he said huskily and prosaically, “I ain’t dead!”

She sprang to her feet and stood gazing at him, intent and quivering.

“I be truly alive an’ kicking an’ ez worthless ez ever,” he went on.

She said not a word, but bent and pallid, and, quaking in every muscle, stood peering beneath her hand, which still held back her hair.

“It’s all a mistake,” he urged. “This ain’t no grave. The top war dug a leetle ter turn off a revenuer’s suspicions o’ the moonshiners. They put that tale out.”

Still, evidently on the verge of collapse, she did not speak.

“Ye needn’t be afeared ez I be goin’ ter take fur true all I hearn ye say; folks air gin ter vauntin’ the dead,” he paused for a moment, remembering the caustic comments over the deal of the cards, then added, “though I reckon I hev hed some cur’ous ‘speriences ez a harnt.”

She suddenly threw up both arms with a shrill scream, half nervous exhaustion, half inexpressible delight. She swayed to and fro, almost fainting, her balance failing. He caught her in his arms, and she leaned sobbing against his breast.

“I stand ter every word of it,” she cried, her voice broken and lapsed from control. “I love ye, an’ I despise all the rest!”

“I be powerful wild,” he suggested contritely.

“I ain’t keerin’ ef ye be ez wild ez a deer.”

“But I’m goin’ to quit gamesome company an’ playin’ kyerds an’ sech. I expec’ ter mend my ways now,” he promised eagerly.

“Ye kin mend ’em or let ’em stay tore, jes ez ye please,” she declared recklessly. “I ain’t snatched my lovyer from the jaws o’ death ter want him otherwise; ye be plumb true-hearted, I know.”

“I mought ez well hev been buried in this grave fer the last ten year’ fer all the use I hev been,” he protested solemnly; “but I hev learnt a lesson through bein’ a harnt fer a while–I hev jes kem ter life. I’m goin’ ter live now. I’ll make myself some use in the world, an’ fust off I be goin’ ter hinder the murder of a man what they hev got trapped up yander at the still.”