Page:Honore Willsie--Judith of the godless valley.djvu/67

 hip. It's different now. You're altogether too highty-tighty, Jude, for a girl. You keep away from Scott Parsons, or I'll make you regret it."

Judith made no reply.

Scott's trial took place in April. It was a matter of deep interest, of course, to Lost Chief, and every one who could get to Mountain City by horse, wagon, or automobile, attended the court sessions. Judith and Douglas were chief witnesses and were royally entertained by young Jeff, who had returned to Lost Chief a week or so after his father's funeral.

Scott was acquitted on the plea of self-defense but he did not return at once to Lost Chief. The attitude of young Jeff did not make an early return seem diplomatic.

Douglas, when he came home from the trial, had a curious feeling that the winter just passed had ended his boyhood. He did not know why. He was not old enough to realize that when the fires of desire and the fear of death begin to sear a boy's mind, adolescence is passing and manhood has all but arrived.

Judith, who had accomplished her fifteenth birthday in March, a day or so before Doug arrived at the dignity of seventeen, had changed too. She had been less profoundly affected by the murder than Douglas; not that she was less sensitive or intelligent than he, but she was far less introspective than her foster-brother. And Judith had two unfailing foods for all hungers of the mind. One was her love of reading, the other, her love of riding; both absorbing, to the elimination of self investigation.

Douglas read a great deal, himself. Books and magazines furnished the only mental stimulants in the valley and it was a surprisingly well-read community. But