It seemed that the torturous days, weeks and months that he wandered through the hills furtively and alone, waiting and watching since his father's killing and since Lem and Belle-Ann had slipped away and out of his life, was time enough to make a decrepit, aged man. An insufferable loneliness had wrapped its tentacles around his being, and had, like a cruel tourniquet, crushed all the joy out of his soul. At times in retrospective indulgence he felt that his soul could not endure. Tears might have alleviated the misery within him, but Buddy's grievous repining and loneliness was of a tearless brand.
Buddy Lutts was a boy in size and in years only, for it was with an adult stoicism that he valiantly fought this creeping madness. In his weaker moments this brooding would seize him and drag him back to the brink of utter hopelessness and despair; but always his purpose would fly to his rescue and beckon a renewed promise, and he would awake out of these lethargies armed with a buoyant sense of patience and inspired with a mighty will to wait and watch.
In these periodical relapses it was his wont to humor his fevered fancy with lurid and extravagant sequences to his protracted term of espionage. Among these vagaries was a pet dream representing the revenuer and Sap McGill creeping upon him in single file; whereupon, he fired and his single ball tore both their hearts out and made him dance and clap his hands with sheer joy, and he was merrier than any orphan had ever been before him. His conscience acquitted him blithely, and his spirits soared skyward.
Deprived of these monopolistic creations of reprisal to alleviate the tension of his hate, the bonds of his perverse reason would have burst asunder and left him bereft.
But now again, there arose a cheering prophecy in the advent of spring. Since Lem Lutts had dropped out of the mountain so mysteriously, the bitter nights and days had rolled into weary months. And the brooding months had waxed into riotous winter tempests and had dragged in endless, eternal deluges of ice and snow, adding cold agony to Buddy's already misanthropic heart. But finally the crows rode up on the soft winds out of the South, and a benign sun broke the grip of these frost-bound hills, and gradually emptied their pockets of snow. The ridges and coves, and the emerald hulks of the mountains smiled gratefully back. And through this expanse of tangled scenic splendor, the rhododendrons and laurels wove a banner of multicolored tones. The sassafras and poplar and dogwood bloomed and the cascade sang a new ode. The calling of the lark came up from the lowland, mingled with the blatant scream of jay-birds in the orchard. And the warble of the blue-birds filled the odoriferous somnolent air.