“He took an old cabin at the foot of the hill near where the sheep corral is now, and fixed it up to work in.  The shack had been built first by old man Dewey, him that the mountain’s named after.  It was down there he painted the big picture of her a standin’ by the big spring.  We never thought nothin’ about her bein’ with him so much.  Country folks is that way, Mr. Howitt, ’though we ought to knowed better; we sure ought to knowed better.”  The old giant paused and for some time sat with his head bowed, his forgotten pipe on the floor.

“Well,” he began again; “he stopped with us all that summer, and then one day he went out as usual and didn’t come back.  We hunted the hills out for signs, thinkin’ maybe he met up with some trouble.  He’d sent all his pictures away the week before, Jim Lane haulin’ them to the settlement for him.

“The girl was nigh about wild and rode with me all durin’ the hunt, and once when we saw some buzzards circlin’, she gave a little cry and turned so white that I suspicioned maybe she got to thinkin’ more of him than we knew.  Then one afternoon when we were down yonder in the Hollow, she says, all of a sudden like, ’Daddy, it ain’t no use a ridin’ no more.  He ain’t met up with no trouble.  He’s left all the trouble with us.’  She looked so piqued and her eyes were so big and starin’ that it come over me in a flash what she meant.  She saw in a minute that I sensed it, and just hung her head, and we come home.

“She just kept a gettin’ worse and worse, Mr. Howitt; ’peared to fade away like, like I watched them big glade lilies do when the hot weather comes.  About the only time she would show any life at all was when someone would go for the mail, when she’d always be at the gate a waitin’ for us.

“Then one day, a letter come.  I brung it myself.  She give a little cry when I handed it to her, and run into the house, most like her old self.  I went on out to the barn to put up my horse, thinkin’ maybe it was goin’ to be alright after all; but pretty soon, I heard a scream and then a laugh.  ’Fore God, sir, that laugh’s a ringin’ in my ears yet.  She was ravin’ mad when I got to her, a laughin’, and a screechin’, and tryin’ to hurt herself, all the while callin’ for him to come.

“I read the letter afterwards.  It told over and over how he loved her and how no woman could ever be to him what she was; said they was made for each other, and all that; and then it went on to say how he couldn’t never see her again; and told about what a grand old family his was, and how his father was so proud and expected such great things from him, that he didn’t dare tell, them bein’ the last of this here old family, and her bein’ a backwoods girl, without any schoolin’ or nothin’.”

“My God!  O, my God!” faltered the stranger’s voice in the darkness.

Old Matt talked on in a hard easy tone.  “Course it was all wrote out nice and smooth like he talked, but that’s the sense of it.  He finished it by sayin’ that he would be on his way to the old country when the letter reached her, and that it wouldn’t be no use to try to find him.