"Do you think he will come, June?"
The little girl hesitated.
"I'm afeerd he will," she said, and Hale smiled.
"Well, I'll try to persuade him to let you stay, if he does come."
June was quite right. She had seen the matter the night before
just as it was. For just at that hour young Dave, sobered, but
still on the verge of tears from anger and humiliation, was
telling the story of the day in her father's cabin. The old man's
brows drew together and his eyes grew fierce and sullen, both at
the insult to a Tolliver and at the thought of a certain moonshine
still up a ravine not far away and the indirect danger to it in
any finicky growth of law and order. Still he had a keen sense of
justice, and he knew that Dave had not told all the story, and
from him Dave, to his wonder, got scant comfort--for another
reason as well: with a deal pending for the sale of his lands, the
shrewd old man would not risk giving offence to Hale--not until
that matter was settled, anyway. And so June was safer from
interference just then than she knew. But Dave carried the story
far and wide, and it spread as a story can only in the hills.
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