a knotty point or problem, he would walk over to John Burnham’s for help, or the school-master, as he went to and fro from his college duties, would find the boy on a fence by the roadside waiting with his question for him.  All the summer Jason toiled.  When there was no hard labor, always he had to fight the tobacco worms with spray, and hand, and boot-heel, until the rich dark-green of the leaves took on a furry, velvety sheen—­until at ripening they turned to a bright gold and were ready for the chisel-bladed, double-edged knife with which the plants are cut close to the ground.  Then they must be hung on upright tobacco sticks, stalks upward, to wilt under the August sun, and then on to be housed in Colonel Pendleton’s great barns to dry within their slitted walls.  Several times during the summer Arch Hawn came by and looked at the boy’s work with keen, approving eye and in turn won a falling-off in Jason’s old prejudice against him; for Arch had built a church in the county-seat in the mountains, had helped the county schools, was making ready to help the mountain people fight unjust claims to their lands, and, himself charged with helping to bring the mountain army down to the capital, stood boldly ready to surrender to the call of the law—­he even meant to help Steve Hawn in his trouble, for Steve, after an examining trial, had been remanded back to prison without bail:  and he was going to help Jason in his trial, which would closely follow Steve’s.

All summer, too, Gray and Marjorie were riding or driving past the tobacco field, and Jason and Mavis, when they saw either or both coming, would move to the end of the field that was farthest from the turnpike and, turning their backs, would pretend not to see.  Sometimes the two mountaineers would be caught where avoidance was impossible, and then Marjorie and Gray would call out cheerily and with a smile—­to get in return from the children of the soil a grave, silent nod of the head and a grave, answering glance of the eye—­for neither knew the part the Blue-grass boy and girl had played in the getting of Jason’s freedom, until one late afternoon of the closing summer days, for John Burnham had been asked to keep the matter a secret.  But Steve Hawn had learned from his lawyer and had told his wife Martha when she came to visit him in prison; and that late afternoon she was in the tobacco field when Mavis and Jason moved to the other end and turned their backs as Marjorie rode by on her way home and Gray an hour later galloped past the other way.

“I reckon,” she said quietly to Jason, “ef you knowed whut that boy an’ gal has been a-doin’ fer ye, you wouldn’t be a-actin’ that-a-way.”

And then she explained and started for home.  Both stood still—­ silent and dumfounded—­and only Mavis spoke at last.

“Both of us beholden to both of ’em.”

Jason made no answer, but bent to his work.  When Mavis, too, started for home he stayed behind without explanation, and when she was out of sight he climbed the fence at the edge of the woods, and sat there looking toward the sunset fading behind Marjorie’s home.