Page:Harold Bell Wright--The shepherd of the hills.djvu/351

 safety is the ground of their manhood and womanhood.

And so it was, on that spring morning when the young giant felt the red life throbbing strongly in his great limbs, as he followed his team to and fro across the field. And in his voice, as he shouted to his horses at the end of the furrow, there was something under the words, something of a longing, something also of a challenge.

Sammy was going to spend the day with her friends on Jake Creek. She had not been to see Mandy since the night of her father's death. As she went, she stopped at the lower end of the field to shout a merry word to the man with the plow, and it was sometime later when the big fellow again started his team. The challenge in his tone had grown bolder.

Sammy returned that afternoon in time for the evening meal, and Aunt Mollie thought, as the girl came up the walk, that the young woman had never looked so beautiful. "Why, honey," she said, "you're just a bubblin' over with life. Your cheeks are as rosy; your eyes are as sparklin', you're fairly shinin' all over. Your ride sure done you good."

The young woman replied with a hug that made her admirer gasp. "Law, child; you're strong as a young panther. You walk like one too; so kind of strong, easy like."