"Munner?" she repeated dubiously.
No shout of welcome, no sudden rush, no arms to fling about her mother. But
if her throat was dry and closed Kate allowed no sign of it to creep into
her voice.
"Where's Daddy Dan?"
"He's gone away."
"Where?"
"Oh--over there!"
The mother rose slowly to her feet, and looked out across the mountains as
if in search of aid. For her mind had harked back to that story her father
used to tell of the coming of Dan Barry; how he had ridden across the hills
one evening and saw, walking against the sunset, a tattered boy who
whistled strangely as he went, and when old Joe Cumberland asked where he
was going he had only waved a vague hand toward the north and answered,
"Oh--over there. It was sufficient destination for him, it was sufficient
explanation now for the child. She remembered how she, herself a child
then, had sat at her father's table and watched the brown face of the
strange boy with fascination, and the wild, quick eyes which went
everywhere and rested in no one place. They were the eyes which looked up
to her now from Joan's face, and she felt suddenly divorced from her baby,
as if all the blood in Joan were the blood of her father.
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