The lithe form had crept back to the ladder and had disappeared before Flukey slipped quietly from his bed and drew on the blue-jeans overalls.  As he stole through the kitchen, he could hear the snorts of Granny Cronk coming from the back room.  The outside door stood partly open, and without hesitation he passed through and closed it after him that the wind might not slam it.  Then he limped along under the shore trees, up a little hill, and dropped out of sight into an open cavern, where Flea, a candle in her hand, sat in semidarkness.

The cave had been the children’s playground ever since they could remember.  Here they had come to weep over indignities heaped upon them in childhood; here they had come in joy and in sorrow, and now, in secret conclave in the early hours of the morning, they had come again.

“Ye’re here!” said Flea in feverish haste.  “I feared ye’d go to sleep again.”

“Nope; I allers come when ye want me, Flea.”

“Did ye steal tonight?”

“Yep.”

“What did ye get?”

The boy shuddered, and a strange, hunted expression came into his eyes.  “Spoons, knives, clothes, and things,” said he; “and I’d ruther be tore to pieces by wild bulls than ever steal again!”

His voice was toned with an unnatural ring.  Wonderingly, Flea drew closer to him, the candle dripping white, round drops hot on the brown hand.

“But Pappy Lon says as how ye must steal, don’t he?” she asked presently.

“Yep, and as how you must go with Lem.”

“I won’t, I won’t!  Pappy Lon can kill me first!”

She said this in passionate anger; but, upon holding the candle close to Flukey’s face, she exclaimed: 

“Fluke, don’t look like that—­it scares me!”

He was piercing the dark ends of the cave, his eyes colored like steel.  They were softened only by shots of brown, which ran like chain lightning through them.  The girl’s gaze followed her brother’s timidly; for he looked ahead, as if he saw something that threatened her and him.  In spite of her soft touch, the boy looked on and on in his unyielding fierceness at the fast approaching inevitable, which he had not been able to stem.  That day a change had been ordered in their lives, and it had come upon him in the shape of a mental blow that hurt him far worse than if Pappy Lon had flogged him throughout the night.

“If Pappy Lon sends me next Saturday to Lem,” Flea ventured in an undertone, “then ye can’t help me much, can ye, Fluke?”

The muscles of the boy’s face relaxed, and he drew his knee up to his chest.  “When my leg ain’t lame I’m strong enough to lick Lem, if—­if—­”

“Nope; I ain’t no notion for ye to lick him yet, Fluke.  Do ye believe in the sayin’s of Screech Owl?”

“Ye mean—­”

“Do ye believe what she says when the bats be a flyin’ round in her head, and when she sees the good land for you and myself, Flukey?”