When he was not there, life grew a little easier for her in time, because of her dreams, the patience that was built from them and Hale's kindly words, the comfort of her garden and her books, and the blessed force of habit. For as time went on, she got consciously used to the rough life, the coarse food and the rude ways of her own people and her own home. And though she relaxed not a bit in her own dainty cleanliness, the shrinking that she felt when she first arrived home, came to her at longer and longer intervals. Once a week she went down to Uncle Billy's, where she watched the water-wheel dripping sun-jewels into the sluice, the kingfisher darting like a blue bolt upon his prey, and listening to the lullaby that the water played to the sleepy old mill--and stopping, both ways, to gossip with old Hon in her porch under the honeysuckle vines. Uncle Billy saw the change in her and he grew vaguely uneasy about her--she dreamed so much, she was at times so restless, she asked so many questions he could not answer, and she failed to ask so many that were on the tip of her tongue. He saw that while her body was at home, her thoughts rarely were; and it all haunted him with a vague sense that he was losing her. But old Hon laughed at him and told him he was an old fool and to “git another pair o' specs” and maybe he could see that the “little gal” was in love. This startled Uncle Billy, for he was so like a father to June that he was as slow as a father in recognizing that his child has grown to such absurd maturity. But looking back to the beginning--how the little girl had talked of the “furriner” who had come into Lonesome Cove all during the six months he was gone; how gladly she had gone away to the Gap to school, how anxious she was to go still farther away again, and, remembering all the strange questions she asked him about things in the outside world of which he knew nothing--Uncle Billy shook his head in confirmation of his own conclusion, and with all his soul he wondered about Hale--what kind of a man he was and what his purpose was with June--and of every man who passed his mill he never failed to ask if he knew “that ar man Hale” and what he knew. All he had heard had been in Hale's favour, except from young Dave Tolliver, the Red Fox or from any Falin of the crowd, which Hale had prevented from capturing Dave. Their statements bothered him--especially the Red Fox's evil hints and insinuations about Hale's purposes one day at the mill. The miller thought of them all the afternoon and all the way home, and when he sat down at his fire his eyes very naturally and simply rose to his old rifle over the door--and then he laughed to himself so loudly that old Hon heard him.