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Title: The Heart Of The Hills

Author: John Fox, Jr.

Release Date: February, 2004 [EBook #5145]
[Yes, we are more than one year ahead of schedule]
[This file was first posted on May 13, 2002]

Edition: 10

Language: English

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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE HEART OF THE HILLS ***




Produced by Charles Franks and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team




THE HEART OF THE HILLS

By John Fox, Jr.


Author of "The Little Shepherd of Kingdom Come," "The Trail of the
Lonesome Pine," Etc.


With Four Illustrations By F. C. YOHN




                    IN
              GRATEFUL MEMORY
                    OF
                MY FATHER

    WHO LOVED THE GREAT MOTHER, HER FORMS,
            HER MOODS, HER WAYS.

   TO THE END SHE LEFT HIM THE JOY OF YOUTH
          IN THE COMING OF SPRING

June 28, 1912.






THE HEART OF THE HILLS




I


Twin spirals of blue smoke rose on either side of the spur, crept
tendril-like up two dark ravines, and clearing the feathery green
crests of the trees, drifted lazily on upward until, high above,
they melted shyly together and into the haze that veiled the
drowsy face of the mountain.

Each rose from a little log cabin clinging to the side of a little
hollow at the head of a little creek. About each cabin was a
rickety fence, a patch of garden, and a little cleared hill-side,
rocky, full of stumps, and crazily traced with thin green spears
of corn. On one hill-side a man was at work with a hoe, and on the
other, over the spur, a boy--both barefooted, and both in patched
jean trousers upheld by a single suspender that made a wet line
over a sweaty cotton shirt: the man, tall, lean, swarthy, grim;
the boy grim and dark, too, and with a face that was prematurely
aged. At the man's cabin a little girl in purple homespun was
hurrying in and out the back door clearing up after the noonday
meal; at the boy's, a comely woman with masses of black hair sat
in the porch with her hands folded, and lifting her eyes now and
then to the top of the spur. Of a sudden the man impatiently threw
down his hoe, but through the battered straw hat that bobbed up
and down on the boy's head, one lock tossed on like a jetblack
plume until he reached the end of his straggling row of corn.
There he straightened up and brushed his earth-stained fingers
across a dullred splotch on one cheek of his sullen set face. His
heavy lashes lifted and he looked long at the woman on the porch--
looked without anger now and with a new decision in his steady
eyes. He was getting a little too big to be struck by a woman,
even if she were his own mother, and nothing like that must happen
again.

A woodpecker was impudently tapping the top of a dead burnt tree
near by, and the boy started to reach for a stone, but turned
instead and went doggedly to work on the next row, which took him
to the lower corner of the garden fence, where the ground was
black and rich. There, as he sank his hoe with the last stroke
around the last hill of corn, a fat fishing-worm wriggled under
his very eyes, and the growing man lapsed swiftly into the boy
again. He gave another quick dig, the earth gave up two more
squirming treasures, and with a joyful gasp he stood straight
again--his eyes roving as though to search all creation for help
against the temptation that now was his. His mother had her face
uplifted toward the top of the spur; and following her gaze, he
saw a tall mountaineer slouching down the path. Quickly he
crouched behind the fence, and the aged look came back into his
face. He did not approve of that man coming over there so often,
kinsman though he was, and through the palings he saw his mother's
face drop quickly and her hands moving uneasily in her lap. And
when the mountaineer sat down on the porch and took off his hat to
wipe his forehead, he noticed that his mother had on a newly
bought store dress, and that the man's hair was wet with something
more than water. The thick locks had been combed and were
glistening with oil, and the boy knew these facts for signs of
courtship; and though he was contemptuous, they furnished the
excuse he sought and made escape easy. Noiselessly he wielded his
hoe for a few moments, scooped up a handful of soft dirt, meshed
the worms in it, and slipped the squirming mass into his pocket.
Then he crept stooping along the fence to the rear of the house,
squeezed himself between two broken palings, and sneaked on tiptoe
to the back porch. Gingerly he detached a cane fishing-pole from a
bunch that stood upright in a corner and was tiptoeing away, when
with another thought he stopped, turned back, and took down from
the wall a bow and arrow with a steel head around which was wound
a long hempen string. Cautiously then he crept back along the
fence, slipped behind the barn into the undergrowth and up a dark
little ravine toward the green top of the spur. Up there he turned
from the path through the thick bushes into an open space, walled
by laurel-bushes, hooted three times surprisingly like an owl, and
lay contentedly down on a bed of moss. Soon his ear caught the
sound of light footsteps coming up the spur on the other side, the
bushes parted in a moment more, and a little figure in purple
homespun slipped through them, and with a flushed, panting face
and dancing eyes stood beside him.

The boy nodded his head sidewise toward his own home, and the girl
silently nodded hers up and down in answer. Her eyes caught sight
of the bow and arrow on the ground beside him and lighted eagerly,
for she knew then that the fishingpole was for her. Without a word
they slipped through the bushes and down the steep side of the
spur to a little branch which ran down into a creek that wound a
tortuous way into the Cumberland.




II

On the other side, too, a similar branch ran down into another
creek which looped around the long slanting side of the spur and
emptied, too, into the Cumberland. At the mouth of each creek the
river made a great bend, and in the sweep of each were rich bottom
lands. A century before, a Hawn had settled in one bottom, the
lower one, and a Honeycutt in the other. As each family
multiplied, more land was cleared up each creek by sons and
grandsons until in each cove a clan was formed. No one knew when
and for what reason an individual Hawn and a Honeycutt had first
clashed, but the clash was of course inevitable. Equally
inevitable was it, too, that the two clans should take the quarrel
up, and for half a century the two families had, with intermittent
times of truce, been traditional enemies. The boy's father, Jason
Hawn, had married a Honeycutt in a time of peace, and, when the
war opened again, was regarded as a deserter, and had been forced
to move over the spur to the Honeycutt side. The girl's father,
Steve Hawn, a ne'erdo-well and the son of a ne'er-do-well, had for
his inheritance wild lands, steep, supposedly worthless, and near
the head of the Honeycutt cove. Little Jason's father, when he
quarrelled with his kin, could afford to buy only cheap land on
the Honeycutt side, and thus the homes of the two were close to
the high heart of the mountain, and separated only by the
bristling crest of the spur. In time the boy's father was slain
from ambush, and it was a Hawn, the Honeycutts claimed, who had
made him pay the death price of treachery to his own kin. But when
peace came, this fact did not save the lad from taunt and
suspicion from the children of the Honeycutt tribe, and being a
favorite with his Grandfather Hawn down on the river, and harshly
treated by his Honeycutt mother, his life on the other side in the
other cove was a hard one; so his heart had gone back to his own
people and, having no companions, he had made a playmate of his
little cousin, Mavis, over the spur. In time her mother had died,
and in time her father, Steve, had begun slouching over the spur
to court the widow--his cousin's widow, Martha Hawn. Straightway
the fact had caused no little gossip up and down both creeks,
good-natured gossip at first, but, now that the relations between
the two clans were once more strained, there was open censure, and
on that day when all the men of both factions had gone to the
county-seat, the boy knew that Steve Hawn had stayed at home for
no other reason than to make his visit that day secret; and the
lad's brain, as he strode ahead of his silent little companion,
was busy with the significance of what was sure to come.

At the mouth of the branch, the two came upon a road that also ran
down to the river, but they kept on close to the bank of the
stream which widened as they travelled--the boy striding ahead
without looking back, the girl following like a shadow. Still
again they crossed the road, where it ran over the foot of the
spur and turned down into a deep bowl filled to the brim with bush
and tree, and there, where a wide pool lay asleep in thick shadow,
the lad pulled forth the ball of earth and worms from his pocket,
dropped them with the fishing-pole to the ground, and turned
ungallantly to his bow and arrow. By the time he had strung it,
and had tied one end of the string to the shaft of the arrow and
the other about his wrist, the girl had unwound the coarse
fishing-line, had baited her own hook, and, squatted on her heels,
was watching her cork with eager eyes; but when the primitive
little hunter crept to the lower end of the pool, and was peering
with Indian caution into the depths, her eyes turned to him.

"Watch out thar!" he called, sharply.

Her cork bobbed, sank, and when, with closed eyes, she jerked with
all her might, a big shining chub rose from the water and landed
on the bank beside her. She gave a subdued squeal of joy, but the
boy's face was calm as a star. Minnows like that were all right
for a girl to catch and even for him to eat, but he was after game
for a man. A moment later he heard another jerk and another fish
was flopping on the bank, and this time she made no sound, but
only flashed her triumphant eyes upon him. At the third fish, she
turned her eyes for approval--and got none; and at the fourth, she
did not look up at all, for he was walking toward her.

"You air skeerin' the big uns," he said shortly, and as he passed
he pulled his Barlow knife from his pocket and dropped it at her
feet. She rose obediently, and with no sign of protest began
gathering an apronful of twigs and piling them for a fire. Then
she began scraping one of the fish, and when it was cleaned she
lighted the fire. The blaze crackled merrily, the blue smoke rose
like some joyous spirit loosed for upward flight, and by the time
the fourth fish was cleaned, a little bed of winking coals was
ready and soon a gentle sizzling assailed the boy's ears, and a
scent made his nostrils quiver and set his stomach a-hungering.
But still he gave no sign of interest--even when the little girl
spoke at last:

"Dinner's ready."

He did not look around, for he had crouched, his body taut from
head to foot, and he might have been turned suddenly to stone for
all the sign of life he gave, and the little girl too was just as
motionless. Then she saw the little statue come slowly back to
quivering life. She saw the bow bend, the shaft of the arrow
drawing close to the boy's paling cheek, there was a rushing hiss
through the air, a burning hiss in the water, a mighty bass leaped
from the convulsed surface and shot to the depths again, leaving
the headless arrow afloat. The boy gave one sharp cry and lapsed
into his stolid calm again.

The little girl said nothing, for there is no balm for the tragedy
of the big fish that gets away. Slowly he untied the string from
his reddened wrist and pulled the arrow in. Slowly he turned and
gazed indifferently at the four crisp fish on four dry twigs with
four pieces of corn pone lying on the grass near them, and the
little girl squatting meekly and waiting, as the woman should for
her working lord. With his Barlow knife he slowly speared a corn
pone, picking up a fish with the other hand, and still she waited
until he spoke.

"Take out, Mavie," he said with great gravity and condescension,
and then his knife with a generous mouthful on its point stopped
in the air, his startled eyes widened, and the little girl shrank
cowering behind him. A heavy footfall had crunched on the quiet
air, the bushes had parted, and a huge mountaineer towered above
them with a Winchester over his shoulder and a kindly smile under
his heavy beard. The boy was startled--not frightened.

"Hello, Babe!" he said coolly. "Whut devilmint you up to now?"

The giant smiled uneasily:

"I'm keepin' out o' the sun an' a-takin' keer o' my health," he
said, and his eyes dropped hungrily to the corn pone and fried
fish, but the boy shook his head sturdily.

"You can't git nothin' to eat from me, Babe Honeycutt."

"Now, looky hyeh, Jason--"

"Not a durn bite," said the boy firmly, "even if you air my
mammy's brother. I'm a Hawn now, I want ye to know, an' I ain't
goin' to have my folks say I was feedin' an' harborin' a
Honeycutt--'specially you."

It would have been humorous to either Hawn or Honeycutt to hear
the big man plead, but not to the girl, though he was an enemy,
and had but recently wounded a cousin of hers, and was hiding from
her own people, for her warm little heart was touched, and big
Babe saw it and left his mournful eyes on hers.

"An' I'm a-goin' to tell whar I've seed ye," went on the boy
savagely, but the girl grabbed up two fish and a corn pone and
thrust them out to the huge hairy hand eagerly stretched out.

"Now, git away," she said breathlessly, "git away--quick!"

"Mavis!" yelled the boy.

"Shet up!" she cried, and the lips of the routed boy fell apart in
sheer amazement, for never before had she made the slightest
question of his tyrannical authority, and then her eyes blazed at
the big Honeycutt and she stamped her foot.

"I'd give 'em to the meanest dog in these mountains."

The big man turned to the boy.

"Is he dead yit?"

"No, he ain't dead yit," said the boy roughly.

"Son," said the mountaineer quietly, "you tell whutever you please
about me."

The curiously gentle smile had never left the bearded lips, but in
his voice a slight proud change was perceptible.

"An' you can take back yo' corn pone, honey."

Then dropping the food in his hand back to the ground, he
noiselessly melted into the bushes again.

At once the boy went to work on his neglected corn-bread and fish,
but the girl left hers untouched where they lay. He ate silently,
staring at the water below him, nor did the little girl turn her
eyes his way, for in the last few minutes some subtle change in
their relations had taken place, and both were equally surprised
and mystified. Finally, the lad ventured a sidewise glance at her
beneath the brim of his hat and met a shy, appealing glance once
more. At once he felt aggrieved and resentful and turned sullen.

"He throwed it back in yo' face," he said. "You oughtn't to 'a'
done it."

Little Mavis made no answer.

"You're nothin' but a gal, an' nobody'll hold nothin' agin you,
but with my mammy a Honeycutt an' me a-livin' on the Honeycutt
side, you mought 'a' got me into trouble with my own folks." The
girl knew how Jason had been teased and taunted and his life made
miserable up and down the Honeycutt creek, and her brown face grew
wistful and her chin quivered.

"I jes' couldn't he'p it, Jason," she said weakly, and the little
man threw up his hands with a gesture that spoke his hopelessness
over her sex in general, and at the same time an ungracious
acceptance of the terrible calamity she had perhaps left dangling
over his head. He clicked the blade of his Barlow knife and rose.

"We better be movin' now," he said, with a resumption of his old
authority, and pulling in the line and winding it about the cane
pole, he handed it to her and started back up the spur with Mavis
trailing after, his obedient shadow once more.

On top of the spur Jason halted. A warm blue haze transfused with
the slanting sunlight overlay the flanks of the mountains which,
fold after fold, rippled up and down the winding river and above
the green crests billowed on and on into the unknown. Nothing more
could happen to them if they went home two hours later than would
surely happen if they went home now, the boy thought, and he did
not want to go home now. For a moment he stood irresolute, and
then, far down the river, he saw two figures on horseback come
into sight from a strip of woods, move slowly around a curve of
the road, and disappear into the woods again.

One rode sidewise, both looked absurdly small, and even that far
away the boy knew them for strangers. He did not call Mavis's
attention to them--he had no need--for when he turned, her face
showed that she too had seen them, and she was already moving
forward to go with him down the spur. Once or twice, as they went
down, each glimpsed the coming "furriners" dimly through the
trees; they hurried that they might not miss the passing, and on a
high bank above the river road they stopped, standing side by
side, the eyes of both fixed on the arched opening of the trees
through which the strangers must first come into sight. A ringing
laugh from the green depths heralded their coming, and then in the
archway were framed a boy and a girl and two ponies--all from
another world. The two watchers stared silently--the boy noting
that the other boy wore a cap and long stockings, the girl that a
strange hat hung down the back of the other girl's head--stared
with widening eyes at a sight that was never for them before. And
then the strangers saw them--the boy with his bow and arrow, the
girl with a fishing-pole--and simultaneously pulled their ponies
in before the halting gaze that was levelled at them from the
grassy bank. Then they all looked at one another until boy's eyes
rested on boy's eyes for question and answer, and the stranger
lad's face flashed with quick humor.

"Were you looking for us?" he asked, for just so it seemed to him,
and the little mountaineer nodded.

"Yes," he said gravely.

The stranger boy laughed.

"What can we do for you?"

Now, little Jason had answered honestly and literally, and he saw
now that he was being trifled with.

"A feller what wears gal's stockings can't do nothin' fer me," he
said coolly.

Instantly the other lad made as though he would jump from his
pony, but a cry of protest stopped him, and for a moment he glared
his hot resentment of the insult; then he dug his heels into his
pony's sides.

"Come on, Marjorie," he said, and with dignity the two little
"furriners" rode on, never looking back even when they passed over
the hill.

"He didn't mean nothin'," said Mavis, "an' you oughtn't--"

Jason turned on her in a fury.

"I seed you a-lookin' at him!"

"'Tain't so! I seed you a-lookin' at HER!" she retorted, but her
eyes fell before his accusing gaze, and she began worming a bare
toe into the sand.

"Air ye goin' home now?" she asked, presently.

"No," he said shortly, "I'm a-goin' atter him. You go on home."

The boy started up the hill, and in a moment the girl was trotting
after him. He turned when he heard the patter of her feet.

"Huh!" he grunted contemptuously, and kept on. At the top of the
hill he saw several men on horseback in the bend of the road
below, and he turned into the bushes.

"They mought tell on us," explained Jason, and hiding bow and
arrow and fishing-pole, they slipped along the flank of the spur
until they stood on a point that commanded the broad river-bottom
at the mouth of the creek.

By the roadside down there, was the ancestral home of the Hawns
with an orchard about it, a big garden, a stable huge for that
part of the world, and a meat-house where for three-quarters of a
century there had always been things "hung up." The old log house
in which Jason and Mavis's great-great-grandfather had spent his
pioneer days had been weather-boarded and was invisible somewhere
in the big frame house that, trimmed with green and porticoed with
startling colors, glared white in the afternoon sun. They could
see the two ponies hitched at the front gate. Two horsemen were
hurrying along the river road beneath them, and Jason recognized
one as his uncle, Arch Hawn, who lived in the county-seat, who
bought "wild" lands and was always bringing in "furriners," to
whom he sold them again. The man with him was a stranger, and
Jason understood better now what was going on. Arch Hawn was
responsible for the presence of the man and of the girl and that
boy in the "gal's stockings," and all of them would probably spend
the night at his grandfather's house. A farm-hand was leading the
ponies to the barn now, and Jason and Mavis saw Arch and the man
with him throw themselves hurriedly from their horses, for the sun
had disappeared in a black cloud and a mist of heavy rain was
sweeping up the river. It was coming fast, and the boy sprang
through the bushes and, followed by Mavis, flew down the road. The
storm caught them, and in a few moments the stranger boy and girl
looking through the front door at the sweeping gusts, saw two
drenched and bedraggled figures slip shyly through the front gate
and around the corner to the back of the house.




III

The two little strangers sat in cane-bottomed chairs before the
open door, still looking about them with curious eyes at the
strings of things hanging from the smoke-browned rafters--beans,
red pepper-pods, and twists of homegrown tobacco, the girl's eyes
taking in the old spinning-wheel in the corner, the piles of
brilliantly figured quilts between the foot-boards of the two beds
ranged along one side of the room, and the boy's, catching eagerly
the butt of a big revolver projecting from the mantel-piece, a
Winchester standing in one corner, a long, old-fashioned squirrel
rifle athwart a pair of buck antlers over the front door, and a
bunch of cane fishing-poles aslant the wall of the back porch.
Presently a slim, drenched figure slipped quietly in, then
another, and Mavis stood on one side of the fire-place and little
Jason on the other. The two girls exchanged a swift glance and
Mavis's eyes fell; abashed, she knotted her hands shyly behind her
and with the hollow of one bare foot rubbed the slender arch of
the other. The stranger boy looked up at Jason with a pleasant
glance of recognition, got for his courtesy a sullen glare that
travelled from his broad white collar down to his stockinged legs,
and his face flushed; he would have trouble with that mountain
boy. Before the fire old Jason Hawn stood, and through a smoke
cloud from his corn-cob pipe looked kindly at his two little
guests.

"So that's yo' boy an' gal?"

"That's my son Gray," said Colonel Pendleton.

"And that's my cousin Marjorie," said the lad, and Mavis looked
quickly to little Jason for recognition of this similar
relationship and got no answering glance, for little did he care
at that moment of hostility how those two were akin.

"She's my cousin, too," laughed the colonel, "but she always calls
me uncle."

Old Jason turned to him.

"Well, we're a purty rough people down here, but you're welcome to
all we got."

"I've found that out," laughed Colonel Pendleton pleasantly,
"everywhere."

"I wish you both could stay a long time with us," said the old man
to the little strangers. "Jason here would take Gray fishin' an'
huntin', an' Mavis would git on my old mare an' you two could jus'
go flyin' up an' down the road. You could have a mighty good time
if hit wasn't too rough fer ye."

"Oh, no," said the boy politely, and the girl said:

"I'd just love to."

The Blue-grass man's attention was caught by the names.

"Jason," he repeated; "why, Jason was a mighty hunter, and Mavis--
that means 'the songthrush.' How in the world did they get those
names?"

"Well, my granddaddy was a powerful b'arhunter in his day," said
the old man, "an' I heerd as how a school-teacher nicknamed him
Jason, an' that name come down to me an' him. I've heerd o' Mavis
as long as I can rickellect. Hit was my grandmammy's name."

Colonel Pendleton looked at the sturdy mountain lad, his compact
figure, square shoulders, well-set head with its shock of hair and
bold, steady eyes, and at the slim, wild little creature shrinking
against the mantel-piece, and then he turned to his own son Gray
and his little cousin Marjorie. Four better types of the Blue-
grass and of the mountains it would be hard to find. For a moment
he saw them in his mind's eye transposed in dress and environment,
and he was surprised at the little change that eye could see, and
when he thought of the four living together in these wilds, or at
home in the Blue-grass, his wonder at what the result might be
almost startled him. The mountain lad had shown no surprise at the
talk about him and his cousin, but when the stranger man caught
his eye, little Jason's lips opened.

"I knowed all about that," he said abruptly.

"About what?"

"Why, that mighty hunter--and Mavis."

"Why, who told you?"

"The jologist."

"The what?" Old Jason laughed.

"He means ge-ol-o-gist," said the old man, who had no little
trouble with the right word himself. "A feller come in here three
year ago with a hammer an' went to peckin' aroun' in the rocks
here, an' that boy was with him all the time. Thar don't seem to
be much the feller didn't tell Jason an' nothin' that Jason don't
seem to remember. He's al'ays a-puzzlin' me by comin' out with
somethin' or other that rock-pecker tol' him an'--" he stopped,
for the boy was shaking his head from side to side.

"Don't you say nothin' agin him, now," he said, and old Jason
laughed.

"He's a powerful hand to take up fer his friends, Jason is."

"He was a friend o' all us mountain folks," said the boy stoutly,
and then he looked Colonel Pendleton in the face--fearlessly, but
with no impertinence.

"He said as how you folks from the big settlemints was a-comin'
down here to buy up our wild lands fer nothin' because we all was
a lot o' fools an' didn't know how much they was worth, an' that
ever'body'd have to move out o' here an' you'd get rich diggin'
our coal an' cuttin' our timber an' raisin' hell ginerally."

He did not notice Marjorie's flush, but went on fierily: "He said
that our trees caught the rain an' our gullies gethered it
together an' troughed it down the mountains an' made the river
which would water all yo' lands. That you was a lot o' damn fools
cuttin' down yo' trees an' a-plantin' terbaccer an' a-spittin' out
yo' birthright in terbaccer-juice, an' that by an' by you'd come
up here an' cut down our trees so that there wouldn't be nothin'
left to ketch the rain when it fell, so that yo' rivers would git
to be cricks an' yo' cricks branches an' yo' land would die o'
thirst an' the same thing 'ud happen here. Co'se we'd all be gone
when all this tuk place, but he said as how I'd live to see the
day when you furriners would be damaged by wash-outs down thar in
the settlements an' would be a-pilin' up stacks an' stacks o' gold
out o' the lands you robbed me an' my kinfolks out of."

"Shet up," said Arch Hawn sharply, and the boy wheeled on him.

"Yes, an' you air a-helpin' the furriners to rob yo' own kin; you
air a-doin' hit yo'self."

"Jason!"

The old man spoke sternly and the boy stopped, flushed and angry,
and a moment later slipped from the room.

"Well!" said the colonel, and he laughed good-humoredly to relieve
the strain that his host might feel on his account; but he was
amazed just the same--the bud of a socialist blooming in those
wilds! Arch Hawn's shrewd face looked a little concerned, for he
saw that the old man's rebuke had been for the discourtesy to
strangers, and from the sudden frown that ridged the old man's
brow, that the boy's words had gone deep enough to stir distrust,
and this was a poor start in the fulfilment of the purpose he had
in view. He would have liked to give the boy a cuff on the ear. As
for Mavis, she was almost frightened by the outburst of her
playmate, and Marjorie was horrified by his profanity; but the
dawning of something in Gray's brain worried him, and presently
he, too, rose and went to the back porch. The rain had stopped,
the wet earth was fragrant with freshened odors, wood-thrushes
were singing, and the upper air was drenched with liquid gold that
was darkening fast. The boy Jason was seated on the yard fence
with his chin in his hands, his back to the house, and his face
toward home. He heard the stranger's step, turned his head, and
mistaking a puzzled sympathy for a challenge, dropped to the
ground and came toward him, gathering fury as he came. Like
lightning the Blue-grass lad's face changed, whitening a little as
he sprang forward to meet him, but Jason, motioning with his
thumb, swerved behind the chimney, where the stranger swiftly
threw off his coat, the mountain boy spat on his hands, and like
two diminutive demons they went at each other fiercely and
silently. A few minutes later the two little girls rounding the
chimney corner saw them--Gray on top and Jason writhing and biting
under him like a tortured snake. A moment more Mavis's strong
little hand had the stranger boy by his thick hair and Mavis,
feeling her own arm clutched by the stranger-girl, let go and
turned on her like a fury. There was a piercing scream from
Marjorie, hurried footsteps answered on the porch, and old Jason
and the colonel looked with bewildered eyes on the little Blue-
grass girl amazed, indignant, white with horror; Mavis shrinking
away from her as though she were the one who had been threatened
with a blow; the stranger lad with a bitten thumb clinched in the
hollow of one hand, his face already reddening with contrition and
shame; and savage little Jason biting a bloody lip and with the
lust of battle still shaking him from head to foot.

"Jason," said the old man sternly, "whut's the matter out hyeh?"

Marjorie pointed one finger at Mavis, started to speak, and
stopped. Jason's eyes fell.

"Nothin'," he said sullenly, and Colonel Pendleton looked to his
son with astonished inquiry, and the lad's fine face turned
bewildered and foolish.

"I don't know, sir," he said at last.

"Don't know?" echoed the colonel. "Well--"

The old man broke in:

"Jason, if you have lost yo' manners an' don't know how to behave
when thar's strangers around, I reckon you'd better go on home."

The boy did not lift his eyes.

"I was a-goin' home anyhow," he said, still sullen, and he turned.

"Oh, no!" said the colonel quickly; "this won't do. Come now--you
two boys shake hands."

At once the stranger lad walked forward to his enemy, and confused
Jason gave him a limp hand. The old man laughed. "Come on in,
Jason--you an' Mavis--an' stay to supper."

The boy shook his head.

"I got to be gittin' back home," he said, and without a word more
he turned again. Marjorie looked toward the little girl, but she,
too, was starting.

"I better be gittin' back too," she said shyly, and off she ran.
Old Jason laughed again.

"Jes' like two young roosters out thar in my barnyard," and he
turned with the colonel toward the house. But Marjorie and her
cousin stood in the porch and watched the two little mountaineers
until, without once looking back, they passed over the sunlit
hill.




IV

On they trudged, the boy plodding sturdily ahead, the little girl
slipping mountain-fashion behind. Not once did she come abreast
with him, and not one word did either say, but the mind and heart
of both were busy. All the way the frown over-casting the boy's
face stayed like a shadow, for he had left trouble at home, he had
met trouble, and to trouble he was going back. The old was
definite enough and he knew how to handle it, but the new bothered
him sorely. That stranger boy was a fighter, and Jason's honest
soul told him that if interference had not come he would have been
whipped, and his pride was still smarting with every step. The new
boy had not tried to bite, or gouge, or to hit him when he was on
top--facts that puzzled the mountain boy; he hadn't whimpered and
he hadn't blabbed--not even the insult Jason had hurled with eye
and tongue at his girl-clad legs. He had said that he didn't know
what they were fighting about, and just why they were Jason
himself couldn't quite make out now; but he knew that even now, in
spite of the hand-shaking truce, he would at the snap of a finger
go at the stranger again. And little Mavis knew now that it was
not fear that made the stranger girl scream--and she, too, was
puzzled. She even felt that the scorn in Marjorie's face was not
personal, but she had shrunk from it as from the sudden lash of a
whip. The stranger girl, too, had not blabbed but had even seemed
to smile her forgiveness when Mavis turned, with no good-by, to
follow Jason. Hand in hand the two little mountaineers had crossed
the threshold of a new world that day. Together they were going
back into their own, but the clutch of the new was tight on both,
and while neither could have explained, there was the same thought
in each mind, the same nameless dissatisfaction in each heart, and
both were in the throes of the same new birth.

The sun was sinking when they started up the spur, and
unconsciously Jason hurried his steps and the girl followed hard.
The twin spirals of smoke were visible now, and where the path
forked the boy stopped and turned, jerking his thumb toward her
cabin and his.

"Ef anything happens"--he paused, and the girl nodded her
understanding--"you an' me air goin' to stay hyeh in the mountains
an' git married."

"Yes, Jasie," she said.

His tone was matter-of-fact and so was hers, nor did she show any
surprise at the suddenness of what he said, and Jason, not looking
at her, failed to see a faint flush come to her cheek. He turned
to go, but she stood still, looking down into the gloomy,
darkening ravine below her. A bear's tracks had been found in that
ravine only the day before. "Air ye afeerd?" he asked tolerantly,
and she nodded mutely.

"I'll take ye down," he said with sudden gentleness.

The tall mountaineer was standing on the porch of the cabin, and
with assurance and dignity Jason strode ahead with a protecting
air to the gate.

"Whar you two been?" he called sharply.

"I went fishin'," said the boy unperturbed, "an' tuk Mavis with
me."

"You air gittin' a leetle too peart, boy. I don't want that gal a-
runnin' around in the woods all day."

Jason met his angry eyes with a new spirit.

"I reckon you hain't been hyeh long."

The shot went home and the mountaineer glared helpless for an
answer.

"Come on in hyeh an' git supper," he called harshly to the girl,
and as the boy went back up the spur, he could hear the scolding
going on below, with no answer from Mavis, and he made up his mind
to put an end to that some day himself. He knew what was waiting
for him on the other side of the spur, and when he reached the
top, he sat down for a moment on a long-fallen, moss-grown log.
Above him beetled the top of his world. His great blue misty hills
washed their turbulent waves to the yellow shore of the dropping
sun. Those waves of forests primeval were his, and the green spray
of them was tossed into cloudland to catch the blessed rain. In
every little fold of them drops were trickling down now to water
the earth and give back the sea its own. The dreamy-eyed man of
science had told him that. And it was unchanged, all unchanged
since wild beasts were the only tenants, since wild Indians
slipped through the wilderness aisles, since the half-wild white
man, hot on the chase, planted his feet in the footsteps of both
and inexorably pushed them on. The boy's first Kentucky ancestor
had been one of those who had stopped in the hills. His rifle had
fed him and his family; his axe had put a roof over their heads,
and the loom and spinning-wheel had clothed their bodies. Day by
day they had fought back the wilderness, had husbanded the soil,
and as far as his eagle eye could reach, that first Hawn had
claimed mountain, river, and tree for his own, and there was none
to dispute the claim for the passing of half a century. Now those
who had passed on were coming back again--the first trespasser
long, long ago with a yellow document that he called a "blanket-
patent" and which was all but the bringer's funeral shroud, for
the old hunter started at once for his gun and the stranger with
his patent took to flight. Years later a band of young men with
chain and compass had appeared in the hills and disappeared as
suddenly, and later still another band, running a line for a
railroad up the river, found old Jason at the foot of a certain
oak with his rifle in the hollow of his arm and marking a dead-
line which none dared to cross.

Later still, when he understood, the old man let them pass, but so
far nobody had surveyed his land, and now, instead of trying to
take, they were trying to purchase. From all points of the compass
the "furriners" were coming now, the rock-pecker's prophecy was
falling true, and at that moment the boy's hot words were having
an effect on every soul who had heard them. Old Jason's suspicions
were alive again; he was short of speech when his nephew, Arch
Hawn, brought up the sale of his lands, and Arch warned the
colonel to drop the subject for the night. The colonel's mind had
gone back to a beautiful woodland at home that he thought of
clearing off for tobacco--he would put that desecration off a
while. The stranger boy, too, was wondering vaguely at the fierce
arraignment he had heard; the stranger girl was curiously haunted
by memories of the queer little mountaineer, while Mavis now had a
new awe of her cousin that was but another rod with which he could
go on ruling her.

Jason's mother was standing in the door when he walked through the
yard gate. She went back into the cabin when she saw him coming,
and met him at the door with a switch in her hand. Very coolly the
lad caught it from her, broke it in two, threw it away, and
picking up a piggin went out without a word to milk, leaving her
aghast and outdone. When he came back, he asked like a man if
supper was ready, and as to a man she answered. For an hour he
pottered around the barn, and for a long while he sat on the porch
under the stars. And, as always at that hour, the same scene
obsessed his memory, when the last glance of his father's eye and
the last words of his father's tongue went not to his wife, but to
the white-faced little son across the foot of the death-bed:

"You'll git him fer me--some day."

"I'll git him, pap."

Those were the words that passed, and in them was neither the
asking nor the giving of a promise, but a simple statement and a
simple acceptance of a simple trust, and the father passed with a
grim smile of content. Like every Hawn the boy believed that a
Honeycutt was the assassin, and in the solemn little fellow one
purpose hitherto had been supreme--to discover the man and avenge
the deed; and though, young as he was, he was yet too cunning to
let the fact be known, there was no male of the name old enough to
pull the trigger, not even his mother's brother, Babe, who did not
fall under the ban of the boy's deathless hate and suspicion. And
always his mother, though herself a Honeycutt, had steadily fed
his purpose, but for a long while now she had kept disloyally
still, and the boy had bitterly learned the reason.

It was bedtime now, and little Jason rose and went within. As he
climbed the steps leading to his loft, he spoke at last, nodding
his head toward the cabin over the spur:

"I reckon I know whut you two are up to, and, furhermore, you are
aimin' to sell this land. I can't keep you from doin' it, I
reckon, but I do ask you not to sell without lettin' me know. I
know somet'n' 'bout it that nobody else knows. An' if you don't
tell me--" he shook his head slowly, and the mother looked at her
boy as though she were dazed by some spell.

"I'll tell ye, Jasie," she said.




V

Down the river road loped Arch Hawn the next morning, his square
chin low with thought, his shrewd eyes almost closed, and his
straight lips closed hard on the cane stem of an unlighted pipe.
Of all the Hawns he had been born the poorest in goods and
chattels and the richest in shrewd resource, restless energy, and
keen foresight. He had gone to the settlements when he was a lad,
he had always been coming and going ever since, and the word was
that he had been to far-away cities in the outer world that were
as unfamiliar to his fellows and kindred as the Holy Land. He had
worked as teamster and had bought and sold anything to anybody
right and left. Resolutely he had kept himself from all part in
the feud--his kinship with the Hawns protecting him on one side
and the many trades with old Aaron Honeycutt in cattle and lands
saving him from trouble on the other. He carried no tales from one
faction to the other, condemned neither one nor the other, and
made the same comment to both--that it was foolish to fight when
there was so much else so much more profitable to do. Once an
armed band of mounted Honeycutts had met him in the road and
demanded news of a similar band of Hawns up a creek. "Did you ever
hear o' my tellin' the Hawns anything about you Honeycutts?" he
asked quietly, and old Aaron had to shake his head.

"Well, if I tol' you anything about them to-day, don't you know
I'd be tellin' them something about you to-morrow?"

Old Aaron scratched his head.

"By Gawd, boys--that's so. Let him pass!"

Thus it was that only Arch Hawn could have brought about an
agreement that was the ninth wonder of the mountain world, and was
no less than a temporary truce in the feud between old Aaron
Honeycutt and old Jason Hawn until the land deal in which both
leaders shared a heavy interest could come to a consummation. Arch
had interested Colonel Pendleton in his "wild lands" at a horse
sale in the Blue-grass. The mountaineer's shrewd knowledge of
horses had caught the attention of the colonel, his drawling
speech, odd phrasing, and quaint humor had amused the Blue-grass
man, and his exposition of the wealth of the hills and the vast
holdings that he had in the hollow of his hand, through options
far and wide, had done the rest--for the matter was timely to the
colonel's needs and to his accidental hour of opportunity. Only a
short while before old Morton Sanders, an Eastern capitalist of
Kentucky birth, had been making inquiry of him that the
mountaineer's talk answered precisely, and soon the colonel found
himself an intermediary between buried coal and open millions, and
such a quick unlooked-for chance of exchange made Arch Hawn's
brain reel. Only a few days before the colonel started for the
mountains, Babe Honeycutt had broken the truce by shooting Shade
Hawn, but as Shade was going to get well, Arch's oily tongue had
licked the wound to the pride of every Honeycutt except Shade, and
he calculated that the latter would be so long in bed that his
interference would never count. But things were going wrong. Arch
had had a hard time with old Jason the night before. Again he had
to go over the same weary argument that he had so often travelled
before: the mountain people could do nothing with the mineral
wealth of their hills; the coal was of no value to them where it
was; they could not dig it, they had no market for it; and they
could never get it into the markets of the outside world. It was
the boy's talk that had halted the old man, and to Arch's
amazement the colonel's sense of fairness seemed to have been
touched and his enthusiasm seemed to have waned a little. That
morning, too, Arch had heard that Shade Hawn was getting well a
little too fast, and he was on his way to see about it. Shade was
getting well fast, and with troubled eyes Arch saw him sitting up
in a chair and cleaning his Winchester.

"What's yo' hurry?"

"I ain't never agreed to no truce," said Shade truculently.

"Don't you think you might save a little time--waitin' fer Babe to
git tame? He's hidin' out. You can't find him now."

"I can look fer him."

"Shade!"--wily Arch purposely spoke loud enough for Shade's wife
to hear, and he saw her thin, worn, shrewish face turn eagerly--
"I'll give ye just fifty dollars to stay here in the house an' git
well fer two more weeks. You know why, an' you know hit's wuth it
to me. What you say?"

Shade rubbed his stubbled chin ruminatively and his wife Mandy
broke in sharply:

"Take it, you fool!"

Apparently Shade paid no heed to the advice nor the epithet, which
was not meant to be offensive, but he knew that Mandy wanted a cow
of just that price and a cow she would have; while he needed
cartridges and other little "fixin's," and he owed for moonshine
up a certain creek, and wanted more just then and badly. But
mental calculation was laborious and he made a plunge:

"Not a cent less'n seventy-five, an' I ain't goin' to argue with
ye."

Arch scowled.

"Split the difference!" he commanded.

"All right."

A few minutes later Arch was loping back up the river road. Within
an hour he had won old Jason to a non-committal silence and
straight-way volunteered to show the colonel the outcroppings of
his coal. And old Jason mounted his sorrel mare and rode with the
party up the creek.

It was Sunday and a holiday for little Jason from toil in the
rocky corn-field. He was stirring busily before the break of dawn.
While the light was still gray, he had milked, cut wood for his
mother, and eaten his breakfast of greasy bacon and corn-bread. On
that day it had been his habit for months to disappear early, come
back for his dinner, slip quietly away again and return worn out
and tired at milking-time. Invariably for a long time his mother
had asked:

"Whut you been a-doin', Jason?" And invariably his answer was:

"Nothin' much."

But, by and by, as the long dark mountaineer, Steve Hawn, got in
the daily habit of swinging over the ridge, she was glad to be
free from the boy's sullen watchfulness, and particularly that
morning she was glad to see him start as usual up the path his own
feet had worn through the steep field of corn, and disappear in
the edge of the woods. She would have a long day for courtship and
for talk of plans which she was keeping secret from little Jason.
She was a Honeycutt and she had married one Hawn, and there had
been much trouble. Now she was going to marry another of the
tribe, there would be more trouble, and Steve Hawn over the ridge
meant to evade it by straightway putting forth from those hills.
Hurriedly she washed the dishes, tidied up her poor shack of a
home, and within an hour she was seated in the porch, in her best
dress, with her knitting in her lap and, even that early, lifting
expectant and shining eyes now and then to the tree-crowned crest
of the ridge.

Up little Jason went through breaking mist and flashing dew. A
wood-thrush sang, and he knew the song came from the bird of which
little Mavis was the human counterpart. Woodpeckers were hammering
and, when a crested cock of the woods took billowy flight across a
blue ravine, he knew him for a big cousin of the little red-heads,
just as Mavis was a little cousin of his. Once he had known birds
only by sight, but now he knew every calling, twittering, winging
soul of them by name. Once he used to draw bead on one and all
heartlessly and indiscriminately with his old rifle, but now only
the whistle of a bob-white, the darting of a hawk, or the whir of
a pheasant's wings made him whirl the old weapon from his
shoulder. He knew flower, plant, bush, and weed, the bark and leaf
of every tree, and even In winter he could pick them out in the
gray etching of a mountain-side--dog-wood, red-bud, "sarvice"
berry, hickory, and walnut, the oaks--white, black, and chestnut--
the majestic poplar, prized by the outer world, and the black-gum
that defied the lightning. All this the dreamy stranger had taught
him, and much more. And nobody, native born to those hills, except
his uncle Arch, knew as much about their hidden treasures as
little Jason. He had trailed after the man of science along the
benches of the mountains where coal beds lie. With him he had
sought the roots of upturned trees and the beds of little creeks
and the gray faces of "rock-houses" for signs of the black
diamonds. He had learned to watch the beds of little creeks for
the shining tell-tale black bits, and even the tiny mouths of
crawfish holes, on the lips of which they sometimes lay. And the
biggest treasure in the hills little Jason had found himself; for
only on the last day before the rock-pecker had gone away, the two
had found signs of another vein, and the geologist had given his
own pick to the boy and told him to dig, while he was gone, for
himself. And Jason had dug. He was slipping now up the tiny
branch, and where the stream trickled down the face of a water-
worn perpendicular rock the boy stopped, leaned his rifle against
a tree, and stepped aside into the bushes. A moment later he
reappeared with a small pick in his hand, climbed up over a mound
of loose rocks and loose earth, ten feet around the rock, and
entered the narrow mouth of a deep, freshly dug ditch. Ten feet
farther on he was halted by a tall black column solidly wedged in
the narrow passage, at the base of which was a bench of yellow
dirt extending not more than two feet from the foot of the column
and above the floor of the ditch. There had been mighty operations
going on in that secret passage; the toil for one boy and one tool
had been prodigious and his work was not yet quite done. Lifting
the pick above his head, the boy sank it into that yellow pedestal
with savage energy, raking the loose earth behind him with hands
and feet. The sunlight caught the top of the black column above
his head and dropped shining inch by inch, but on he worked
tirelessly. The yellow bench disappeared and the heap of dirt
behind him was piled high as his head, but the black column bored
on downward as though bound for the very bowels of the earth, and
only when the bench vanished to the level of the ditch's floor did
the lad send his pick deep into a new layer and lean back to rest
even for a moment. A few deep breaths, the brushing of one forearm
and then the other across his forehead and cheeks, and again he
grasped the tool. This time it came out hard, bringing out with
its point particles of grayish-black earth, and the boy gave a
low, shrill yell. It was a bed of clay that he had struck--the bed
on which, as the geologist had told him, the massive layers of
coal had slept so long. In a few minutes he had skimmed a yellow
inch or two more to the dingy floor of the clay bed, and had
driven his pick under the very edge of the black bulk towering
above him.

His work was done, and no buccaneer ever gloated more over hidden
treasure than Jason over the prize discovered by him and known of
nobody else in the world. He raised his head and looked up the
shimmering black face of his find. He took up his pick again and
notched foot-holes in each side of the yellow ditch. He marked his
own height on the face of the column, and, climbing up along it,
measured his full length again, and yet with outstretched arm he
could barely touch the top of the vein with the tips of his
fingers. No vein half that thick had the rock-pecker with all his
searching found, and the lad gave a long, low whistle of happy
amazement. A moment later he dropped his pick, climbed over the
pile of new dirt, emerged at the mouth of the passage, and sat
down as if on guard in the grateful coolness of the little ravine.
Drawing one long breath, he looked proudly back once more and
began shaking his head wisely. They couldn't fool him. He knew
what that mighty vein of coal was worth. Other people--fools--
might sell their land for a dollar or two an acre, even old Jason,
his grandfather, but not the Jason Hawn who had dug that black
giant out of the side of the mountain.

"Go away, boy," the rock-pecker had said, "Get an education. Leave
this farm alone--it won't run away. By the time you are twenty-
one, an acre of it will be worth as much as all of it is now."

No, they couldn't fool him. He would keep his find a secret from
every soul on earth--even from his grandfather and Mavis, both of
whom he had already been tempted to tell. He rose to his feet with
the resolution and crouched suddenly, listening hard. Something
was coming swiftly toward him through the undergrowth on the other
side of the creek, and he reached stealthily for his rifle, sank
behind the bowlder with his thumb on the hammer just as the bushes
parted on the opposite cliff, and Mavis stood above him, peering
for him and calling his name in an excited whisper. He rose
glowering and angry.

"Whut you doin' up here?" he asked roughly, and the girl shrank,
and her message stopped at her lips.

"They're comin' up here," she faltered.

The boy's eyes accused her mercilessly and he seemed not to hear
her.

"You've been spyin'!"

The dignity of his manhood was outraged, and humbly and helplessly
she nodded in utter abasement, faltering again:

"They're comin' up here!"

"Who's comin' up here?"

"Them strangers an' grandpap an' Uncle Arch--an' another rock-
pecker."

"Did you tell'em?"

The girl crossed her heart and body swiftly.

"I hain't told a soul," she gasped". I come up to tell you."

"When they comin'?"

The sound of voices below answered for her.

The boy wheeled, alert as a wild-cat, the girl slid noiselessly
down the cliff and crept noiselessly after him down the bed of the
creek, until they could both peer through the bushes down on the
next bend of the stream below. There they were--all of them, and
down there they had halted.

"Ain't no use goin' up any furder," said the voice of Arch Hawn;
"I've looked all up this crick an' thar ain't nary a blessed sign
o' coal."

"All right," said the colonel, who was puffing with the climb.
"That suits me--I've had enough."

At Jason's side, Mavis echoed his own swift breath of relief, but
as the party turned, the rock-pecker stooped and rose with a black
lump in his hand.

"Hello!" he said, "where did this come from?"

The boy's heart began to throb, for once he had started to carry
that very lump to his grandfather, had changed his mind, and
thoughtlessly dropped it there. The geologist was looking at it
closely and then began to weigh it with his hand.

"This is pretty good-looking coal," he said, and he laughed. "I
guess we'd better go up a little farther--this didn't come out all
by itself."

The boy dug Mavis sharply in the shoulder.

"Git back into the bushes--quick!" he whispered.

The girl shrank away and the boy dropped down into the bed of the
creek and slipped down to where the stream poured between two
bowlders over which ascent was slippery and difficult. And when
the party turned up the bend of the creek, Arch Hawn saw the boy,
tense and erect, on the wet black summit of one bowlder, with his
old rifle in the hollow of his arm.

"Why, hello, Jason!" he cried, with a start of surprise; "found
anything to shoot?"

"Not yit!" said Jason shortly.

The geologist stepped around Arch and started to climb toward the
foot of the bowlder.

"You stop thar!"

The ring of the boy's fiery command stopped the man as though a
rattlesnake had given the order at his very feet, and he looked up
bewildered; but the boy had not moved.

"Whut you mean, boy?" shouted Arch. "We're lookin' for a vein o'
coal."

"Well, you hain't a-goin' to find hit up this way."

"Whut you want to keep us from goin' up here fer?" asked the uncle
with sarcastic suspicion. "Got a still up here?"

"That's my business," said little Jason.

"Well," shouted Arch angrily again, "this ain't yo' land an' I've
got a option on it an' hit's my business to go up here, an' I'm
goin'!"

As he pushed ahead of the geologist the boy flashed his old rifle
to his shoulder.

"I'll let ye come just two steps more," he said quietly, and old
Jason Hawn began to grin and stepped aside as though to get out of
range.

"Hol' on thar, Arch," he said; "he'll shoot, shore!" And Arch held
on, bursting with rage and glaring up at the boy.

"I've a notion to git me a switch an' whoop the life out o' you."
The boy laughed derisively.

"My whoopin' days air over." The amazed and amused geologist put
his hand on Arch's shoulder.

"Never mind," he said, and with a significant wink he pulled a
barometer out of his pocket and carefully noted the altitude.

"We'll manage it later."

The party turned, old Jason still smiling grimly, the colonel
chuckling, the geologist busy with speculation, and Arch sore and
angry, but wondering what on earth it was that the boy had found
up that ravine. Presently with the geologist he dropped behind the
other two and the latter's frowning brow cleared into a smile at
his lips. He stopped, looking still at the black lump and weighing
it once more in his hand.

"I think I know this coal," he said in a low voice, "and if I'm
right you've got the best and thickest vein of coking coal in
these mountains. It's the Culloden seam. Nobody ever has found it
on this side of the mountain, and it is supposed to have petered
out on the way through. That boy has found the Culloden seam. The
altitude is right, the coal looks and weighs like it, and we can
find it somewhere else under that bench along the mountain. So you
better let the boy alone."

Little Jason stood motionless looking after them. Little Mavis
crept from her hiding-place. Her face showed no pride in Jason's
triumph and few traces of excitement, for she was already schooled
to the quiet acquiescence of mountain women in the rough deeds of
the men. She had seen Jason going up that ravine, she could simply
not help going herself to learn why, she was mystified by what he
had done up there, but she had kept his secret faithfully. Now she
was beginning to understand that the matter was serious, and for
that reason the boy's charge of spying lay heavier on her mind. So
she came slowly and shyly and stood behind him, her eyes dark with
penitence.

The boy heard her, but he did not turn around.

"You better go home, Mavie," he said, and at his very tone her
face flashed with joy. "They mought come back agin. I'm goin' to
stay up here till dark. They can't see nothin' then."

There was not a word of rebuke for her; it was his secret and hers
now, and pride and gratitude filled her heart and her eyes.

"All right, Jasie," she said obediently, and down the bowlder she
stepped lightly, and slipping down the bed of the creek,
disappeared. And not once did she look around.

The shadows lengthened, the ravines filled with misty blue, the
steep westward spur threw its bulky shadow on the sunlit flank of
the opposite hill, and the lonely spirit of night came with the
gloom that gathered fast about him in the defile where he lay. A
slow wind was blowing up from the river toward him, and on it came
faintly the long mellow blast of a horn. It was no hunter's call,
and he sprang to his feet. Again the winding came and his tense
muscles relaxed--nor was it a warning that "revenues" were coming-
-and he sank back to his lonely useless vigil again. The sun
dipped, the sky darkened, the black wings of the night rushed
upward and downward and from all around the horizon, but only when
they were locked above him did he slip like a creature of the
gloom down the bed of the stream.




VI

The cabin was unlighted when Jason came in sight of it and
apprehension straightway seized him; so that he broke into a run,
but stopped at the gate and crept slowly to the porch and almost
on tiptoe opened the door. The fire was low, but the look of
things was unchanged, and on the kitchen table he saw his cold
supper laid for him. His mother had maybe gone over the ridge for
some reason to stay all night, so he gobbled his food hastily and,
still uneasy, put forth for Mavis's cabin over the hill. That
cabin, too, was dark and deserted, and he knew now what had
happened--that blast of the horn was a summons to a dance
somewhere, and his mother and Steve had answered and taken Mavis
with them; so the boy sat down on the porch, alone with the night
and the big still dark shapes around him. It would not be very
pleasant for him to follow them--people would tease him and ask
him troublesome questions. But where was the dance, and had they
gone to it after all? He rose and went swiftly down the creek. At
the mouth of it a light shone through the darkness, and from it a
quavering hymn trembled on the still air. A moment later Jason
stood on the threshold of an open door and an old couple at the
fireplace lifted welcoming eyes.

"Uncle Lige, do you know whar my mammy is?"

The old man's eyes took on a troubled look, but the old woman
answered readily:

"Why, I seed her an' Steve Hawn an' Mavis a-goin' down the crick
jest afore dark, an' yo' mammy said as how they was aimin' to go
to yo' grandpap's."

It was his grandfather's horn, then, Jason had heard. The lad
turned to go, and the old circuit rider rose to his full height.

"Come in, boy. Yo' grandpap had better be a-thinkin' about
spreadin' the wings of his immortal sperit, stid o' shakin' them
feet o' clay o' his'n an' a-settin' a bad example to the young an'
errin'!"

"Hush up!" said the old woman. "The Bible don't say nothin' agin a
boy lookin' fer his mammy, no matter whar she is."

She spoke sharply, for Steve Hawn had called her husband out to
the gate, where the two had talked in whispers, and the old man
had refused flatly to tell her what the talk was about. But Jason
had turned without a word and was gone. Out in the darkness of the
road he stood for a moment undecided whether or not he should go
back to his lonely home, and some vague foreboding started him
swiftly on down the creek. On top of a little hill he could see
the light in his grandfather's house, and that far away he could
hear the rollicking tune of "Sourwood Mountain." The sounds of
dancing feet soon came to his ears, and from those sounds he could
tell the figures of the dance just as he could tell the gait of an
unseen horse thumping a hard dirt road. He leaned over the yard
fence--looking, listening, thinking. Through the window he could
see the fiddler with his fiddle pressed almost against his heart,
his eyes closed, his horny fingers thumping the strings like trip-
hammers, and his melancholy calls ringing high above the din of
shuffling feet. His grandfather was standing before the fireplace,
his grizzled hair tousled and his face red with something more
than the spirits of the dance. The colonel was doing the "grand
right and left," and his mother was the colonel's partner--the
colonel as gallant as though he were leading mazes with a queen
and his mother simpering and blushing like a girl. In one corner
sat Steve Hawn, scowling like a storm-cloud, and on one bed sat
Marjorie and the boy Gray watching the couple and apparently
shrieking with laughter; and Jason wondered what they could be
laughing about. Little Mavis was not in sight. When the dance
closed he could see the colonel go over to the little strangers
and, seizing each by the hand, try to pull them from the bed into
the middle of the floor. Finally they came, and the boy, looking
through the window, and Mavis, who suddenly appeared in the door
leading to the porch, saw a strange sight. Gray took Marjorie's
right hand with his left and put his right arm around her waist
and then to the stirring strains of "Soapsuds Over the Fence" they
whirled about the room as lightly as two feathers in an eddy of
air. It was a two-step and the first round dance ever seen in
these hills, and the mountaineers took it silently, grimly, and
with little sign of favor or disapproval, except from old Jason,
who, looking around for Mavis, caught sight of little Jason's
wondering face over her shoulder, for the boy had left the blurred
window-pane and hurried around to the back door for a better view.
With a whoop the old man reached for the little girl, and gathered
in the boy with his other hand.

"Hyeh!" he cried, "you two just git out thar an' shake a foot!"

Little Mavis hung back, but the boy bounded into the middle of the
floor and started into a furious jig, his legs as loose from the
hip as a jumping-jack and the soles and heels of his rough brogans
thumping out every note of the music with astonishing precision
and rapidity. He hardly noticed Mavis at first, and then he began
to dance toward her, his eyes flashing and fixed on hers and his
black locks tumbling about his forehead as though in an electric
storm. The master was calling and the maid answered--shyly at
first, coquettishly by and by, and then, forgetting self and
onlookers, with a fiery abandon that transformed her. Alternately
he advanced and she retreated, and when, with a scornful toss of
that night-black head, the boy jigged away, she would relent and
lure him back, only to send him on his way again. Sometimes they
were back to back and the colonel saw that always then the girl
was first to turn, but if the lad turned first, the girl whirled
as though she were answering the dominant spirit of his eyes even
through the back of her head, and, looking over to the bed, he saw
his own little kinswoman answering that same masterful spirit in a
way that seemed hardly less hypnotic. Even Gray's clear eyes,
fixed at first on the little mountain girl, had turned to Jason,
but they were undaunted and smiling, and when Jason, seeing
Steve's face at the window and his mother edging out through the
front door, seemed to hesitate in his dance, and Mavis, thinking
he was about to stop, turned panting away from him, Gray sprang
from the bed like a challenging young buck and lit facing the
mountain boy and in the midst of a double-shuffle that the amazed
colonel had never seen outdone by any darkey on his farm.

"Jenny with a ruff-duff a-kickin' up the dust," clicked his feet.

   "Juba this and Juba that!
    Juba killed a yaller cat!
    Juba! Juba!"

"Whoop!" yelled old Jason, bending his huge body and patting his
leg and knee to the beat of one big cowhide boot and urging them
on in a frenzy of delight:

"Come on, Jason! Git atter him, stranger! Whoop her up thar with
that fiddle--Heh--ee--dum dee--eede-eedle--dedee-dee!"

Then there was dancing. The fiddler woke like a battery newly
charged, every face lighted with freshened interest, and only the
colonel and Marjorie showed surprise and mystification. The
double-shuffle was hardly included in the curriculum of the
colonel's training school for a gentleman, and where, when, and
how the boy had learned such Ethiopian skill, neither he nor
Marjorie knew. But he had it and they enjoyed it to the full.
Gray's face wore a merry smile, and Jason, though he was breathing
hard and his black hair was plastered to his wet forehead, faced
his new competitor with rallying feet but a sullen face. "The
Forked Deer," "Big Sewell Mountain," and "Cattle Licking Salt" for
Jason, and the back-step, double-shuffle, and "Jim Crow" for Gray;
both improvising their own steps when the fiddler raised his voice
in "Comin' up, Sandy," "Chicken in the Dough-Tray," and "Sparrows
on the Ash-Bank"; and thus they went through all the steps known
to the negro or the mountaineer, until the colonel saw that game
little Jason, though winded, would go on till he dropped, and gave
Gray a sign that the boy's generous soul caught like a flash; for,
as though worn out himself, he threw up his hands with a laugh and
left the floor to Jason. Just then there was the crack of a
Winchester from the darkness outside. Simultaneously, as far as
the ear could detect, there was a sharp rap on a window-pane, as a
bullet sped cleanly through, and in front of the fire old Jason's
mighty head sagged suddenly and he crumbled into a heap on the
floor. Arch Hawn had carried his business deal through. The truce
was over and the feud was on again.




VII

Knowing but little of his brother in the hills, the man from the
lowland Blue-grass was puzzled and amazed that all feeling he
could observe was directed solely at the deed itself and not at
the way it was done. No indignation was expressed at what was to
him the contemptible cowardice involved--indeed little was said at
all, but the colonel could feel the air tense and lowering with a
silent deadly spirit of revenge, and he would have been more
puzzled had he known the indifference on the part of the Hawns as
to whether the act of revenge should take precisely the same form
of ambush. For had the mountain code of ethics been explained to
him--that what was fair for one was fair for the other; that the
brave man could not fight the coward who shot from the brush and
must, therefore, adopt the coward's methods; that thus the method
of ambush had been sanctioned by long custom--he still could never
have understood how a big, burly, kind-hearted man like Jason Hawn
could have been brought even to tolerance of ambush by
environment, public sentiment, private policy, custom, or any
other influence that moulds the character of men.

Old Jason would easily get well--the colonel himself was surgeon
enough to know that--and he himself dressed and bandaged the
ragged wound that the big bullet had made through one of the old
man's mighty shoulders. At his elbow all the time, helping, stood
little Jason, and not once did the boy speak, nor did the line of
his clenched lips alter, nor did the deadly look in his
smouldering eyes change. One by one the guests left, the colonel
sent Marjorie and Gray to bed, grandmother Hawn sent Mavis, and
when all was done and the old man was breathing heavily on a bed
in the corner and grandmother Hawn was seated by the fire with a
handkerchief to her lips, the colonel heard the back door open and
little Jason, too, was gone--gone on business of his own. He had
seen Steve Hawn's face at the window, his mother had slipped out
on the porch while he was dancing, and neither had appeared again.
So little Jason went swiftly through the dark, over the ridge and
up the big creek to the old circuit rider's house, where the
stream forked. All the way he had seen the tracks of a horse which
he knew to be Steve's, for the right forefoot, he knew, had cast a
shoe only the day before.

At the forks the tracks turned up the branch that led to Steve's
cabin and not up toward his mother's house. If Steve had his
mother behind him, he had taken her to his own home; that, in
Mavis's absence, was not right, and, burning with sudden rage, the
boy hurried up the branch. The cabin was dark and at the gate he
gave a shrill, imperative "Hello!"

In a few minutes the door opened and the tousled head of his
cousin was thrust forth.

"Is my mammy hyeh?" he called hotly.

"Yep," drawled Steve.

"Well, tell her I'm hyeh to take her home!" There was no sound
from within.

"Well, she ain't goin' home," Steve drawled.

The boy went sick and speechless with fury, but before he could
get his breath Steve drawled again:

"She's goin' to live here now--we got married to-night." The boy
dropped helplessly against the gate at these astounding words and
his silence stirred Steve to kindness.

"Now, don't take it so hard, Jason. Come on in, boy, an' stay all
night."

Still the lad was silent and another face appeared at the door.

"Come on in, Jasie."

It was his mother's voice and the tone was pleading, but the boy,
with no answer, turned, and they heard his stumbling steps as he
made his way along the fence and started over the spur. Behind him
his mother began to sob and with rough kindness Steve soothed her
and closed the door.

Slowly little Jason climbed the spur and dropped on the old log on
which he had so often sat--fighting out the trouble which he had
so long feared must come. The moon and the stars in her wake were
sinking and the night was very still. His reason told him his
mother was her own mistress, and had the right to marry when she
pleased and whom she pleased, but she was a Honeycutt, again she
had married a Hawn, and the feud was starting again. Steve Hawn
would be under suspicion as his own father had been, Steve would
probably have to live on the Honeycutt side of the ridge, and
Jason's own earlier days of shame he must go through again. That
was his first thought, but his second was a quick oath to himself
that he would not go through them again. He was big enough to
handle a Winchester now, and he would leave his mother and he
would fight openly with the Hawns. And then as he went slowly down
the spur he began to wonder with fresh suspicion what his mother
and Steve might now do, what influence Steve might have over her,
and if he might not now encourage her to sell her land. And, if
that happened, what would become of him? The old hound in the
porch heard him coming and began to bay at him fiercely, but when
he opened the gate the dog bounded to him whining with joy and
trying to lick his hands. He dropped on the porch and the
loneliness of it all clutched his heart so that he had to gulp
back a sob in his throat and blink his eyes to keep back the
tears. But it was not until he went inside finally and threw
himself with his clothes on across his mother's empty bed that he
lost all control and sobbed himself to sleep. When he awoke it was
not only broad daylight, but the sun was an hour high and
streaming through the mud-chinked crevices of the cabin. In his
whole life he had never slept so long after daybreak and he sprang
up in bed with bewildered eyes, trying to make out where he was
and why he was there. The realization struck him with fresh pain,
and when he slowly climbed out of the bed the old hound was
whining at the door. When he opened it the fresh wind striking his
warm body aroused him sharply. He wondered why his mother had not
already been over for her things. The chickens were clustered
expectantly at the corner of the house, the calf was bawling at
the corner of the fence, and the old cow was waiting patiently at
the gate. He turned quickly to the kitchen and to a breakfast on
the scraps of his last night's supper. He did not know how to make
coffee, and for the first time in his life he went without it.
Within an hour the cow was milked and fed, bread crumbs were
scattered to the chickens, and alone in the lonely cabin he faced
the new conditions of his life. He started toward the gate, not
knowing where he should go. He drifted aimlessly down the creek
and he began to wonder about Mavis, whether she had got home and
now knew what had happened and what she thought about it all, and
about his grandfather and who it was that had shot him. There were
many things that he wanted to know, and his steps quickened with a
definite purpose. At the mouth of the creek he hailed the old
circuit rider's house, and the old man and his wife both appeared
in the doorway.

"I reckon you couldn't help doin' it?"

"No," said the old man. "Thar wasn't no reason fer me to deny
'em."

He looked confused and the old woman gulped, for both were
wondering how much the lad knew.

"How's grandpap?"

"Right porely I heerd," said the old woman. "The doctor's thar,
an' he said that if the bullet had 'a' gone a leetle furder down
hit would 'a' killed him."

"Whar's Mavis?"

Again the two old people looked confused, for it was plain that
Jason did not know all that had happened.

"I hain't seed her, but somebody said she went by hyeh on her way
home about an hour ago. I was thinkin' about goin' up thar right
now."

The boy's eyes were shifting now from one to the other and he
broke in abruptly:

"Whut's the matter?"

The old man's lips tightened.

"Jason, she's up thar alone. Yo' mammy an' Steve have run away."

The lad looked at the old man with unblinking eyes.

"Don't ye understand, boy?" repeated the old man kindly. "They've
run away!"

Jason turned his head quickly and started for the gate.

"Now, don't, Jason," called the old woman in a broken voice.
"Don't take on that way. I want ye both to come an' live with us,"
she pleaded. "Come on back now."

The little fellow neither made answer nor looked back, and the old
people watched him turn up the creek, trudging toward Mavis's
home.

The boy's tears once more started when he caught sight of Steve
Hawn's cabin, but he forced them back. A helpless little figure
was sitting in the open doorway with head buried in her arms. She
did not hear him coming even when he was quite near, for the lad
stepped softly and gently put one hand on her shoulder. She looked
up with a frightened start, and at sight of his face she quit her
sobbing and with one hand over her quivering mouth turned her head
away.

"Come on, Mavie," he said quietly.

Again she looked up, wonderingly this time, and seeing some steady
purpose in his eyes rose without a question.

With no word he turned and she followed him back down the creek.
And the old couple, sitting in the porch, saw them coming, the boy
striding resolutely ahead, the little girl behind, and the faces
of both deadly serious--the one with purpose and the other with
blind trust. They did not call to the boy, for they saw him swerve
across the road toward the gate. He did not lift his head until he
reached the gate, and he did not wait for Mavis. He had no need,
for she had hurried to his side when he halted at the steps of the
porch.

"Uncle Lige," he said, "me an' Mavis hyeh want to git married."

Not the faintest surprise showed in Mavis's face, little as she
knew what his purpose was, for what the master did was right; but
the old woman and the old man were stunned into silence and
neither could smile.

"Have you got yo' license?" the old man asked gravely.

"Whut's a license?"

"You got to git a license from the county clerk afore you can git
married, an' hit costs two dollars."

The boy flinched, but only for a moment.

"I kin borrer the money," he said stoutly.

"But you can't git a license--you ain't a man."

"I ain't!" cried the boy hotly; "I GOT to be!"

"Come in hyeh, Jason," said the old man, for it was time to leave
off evasion, and he led the lad into the house while Mavis, with
the old woman's arm around her, waited in the porch. Jason came
out baffled and pale.

"Hit ain't no use, Mavis," he said; "the law's agin us an' we got
to wait. They've run away an' they've both sold out an' yo' daddy
left word that he was goin' to send fer ye whenever he got
whatever he was goin'."

Jason waited and he did not have to wait long.

"I hain't goin' to leave ye," she flashed.




VIII

St. Hilda sat on the vine-covered porch of her little log cabin,
high on the hill-side, with a look of peace in her big dreaming
eyes. From the frame house a few rods below her, mountain
children--boys and girls--were darting in and out, busy as bees,
and, unlike the dumb, pathetic little people out in the hills,
alert, keen-eyed, cheerful, and happy. Under the log foot-bridge
the shining creek ran down past the mountain village below, where
the cupola of the court-house rose above the hot dirt streets, the
ramshackle hotel, and the dingy stores and frame dwellings of the
town. Across the bridge her eyes rested on another neat, well-
built log cabin with a grass plot around it, and, running
alongside and covered with honeysuckle--a pergola! That was her
hospital down there--empty, thank God. With a little turn of her
strong white chin, her eyes rested on the charred foundation of
her school-house, to which some mean hand had applied the torch a
month ago, and were lifted up to the mountain-side, where mountain
men were chopping down trees and mountain oxen yanking them down
the steep slopes to the bank of the creek, and then the peace of
them went deeper still, for they could look back on her work and
find it good. Nun-like in renunciation, she had given up her
beloved Blue-grass land, she had left home and kindred, and she
had settled, two days' journey from a railroad, in the hills. She
had gone back to the physical life of the pioneers, she had
encountered the customs and sentiments of mediaeval days, and no
abbess of those days, carrying light into dark places, needed more
courage and devotion to meet the hardships, sacrifice, and
prejudice that she had overcome. She brought in the first wagon-
load of window-panes for darkened homes before she even tapped on
the window of a darkened mind; but when she did, no plants ever
turned more eagerly toward the light than did the youthful souls
of those Kentucky hills. She started with five pupils in a log
cabin. She built a homely frame house with five rooms, only to
find more candidates clamoring at her door. She taught the girls
to cook, sew, wash and iron, clean house, and make baskets, and
the boys to use tools, to farm, make garden, and take care of
animals; and she taught them all to keep clean. Out in the hills
she found good old names, English and Scotch-Irish. She found men
who "made their mark" boasting of grandfathers who were
"scholards." In one household she came upon a time-worn set of the
"British Poets" up to the nineteenth century, and such was the
sturdy character of the hillsmen that she tossed the theory aside
that they were the descendants of the riffraff of the Old World,
tossed it as a miserable slander and looked upon them as the same
blood as the people of the Blue-grass, the valleys, and the plains
beyond. On the westward march they had simply dropped behind, and
their isolation had left them in a long sleep that had given them
a long rest, but had done them no real harm. Always in their eyes,
however, she was a woman, and no woman was "fitten" to teach
school. She was more--a "fotched-on" woman, a distrusted
"furriner," and she was carrying on a "slavery school." Sometimes
she despaired of ever winning their unreserved confidence, but out
of the very depth of that despair to which the firebrand of some
miscreant had plunged her, rose her star of hope, for then the
Indian-like stoicism of her neighbors melted and she learned the
place in their hearts that was really hers. Other neighborhoods
asked for her to come to them, but her own would not let her go.
Straightway there was nothing to eat, smoke, chew, nor wear that
grew or was made in those hills that did not pour toward her. Land
was given her, even money was contributed for rebuilding, and when
money was not possible, this man and that gave his axe, his horse,
his wagon, and his services as a laborer for thirty and sixty
days. So that those axes gleaming in the sun on the hillside,
those straining muscles, and those sweating brows meant a labor of
love going on for her. No wonder the peace of her eyes was deep.

And yet St. Hilda, as one forsaken lover in the Blue-grass had
christened her, opened the little roll-book in her lap and sighed
deeply, for in there on her waiting-list were the names of a
hundred children for whom, with all the rebuilding, she would have
no place. Only the day before, a mountaineer had brought in nine
boys and girls, his stepdaughter's and his own, and she had sadly
turned them away. Still they were coming in name and in person, on
horseback, in wagon and afoot, and among them was Jason Hawn, who
was starting toward her that morning from far away over the hills.

Over there the twin spirals of smoke no longer rose on either side
of the ridge and drifted upward, for both cabins were closed.
Jason's sale was just over--the sale of one cow, two pigs, a dozen
chickens, one stove, and a few pots and pans--the neighbors were
gone, and Jason sat alone on the porch with more money in his
pocket than he had ever seen at one time in his life. His bow and
arrow were in one hand, his father's rifle was over his shoulder,
and his old nag was hitched to the fence. The time had come. He
had taken a farewell look at the black column of coal he had
unearthed for others, the circuit rider would tend his little
field of corn on shares, Mavis would live with the circuit rider's
wife, and his grandfather had sternly forbidden the boy to take
any hand in the feud. The geologist had told him to go away and
get an education, his Uncle Arch had offered to pay his way if he
would go to the Bluegrass to school--an offer that the boy curtly
declined--and now he was starting to the settlement school of
which he had heard so much, in the county-seat of an adjoining
county. For, even though run by women, it must be better than
nothing, better than being beholden to his Uncle Arch, better than
a place where people and country were strange. So, Jason mounted
his horse, rode down to the forks of the creek and drew up at the
circuit rider's house, where Mavis and the old woman came out to
the gate to say good-by. The boy had not thought much about the
little girl and the loneliness of her life after he was gone, for
he was the man, he was the one to go forth and do; and it was for
Mavis to wait for him to come back. But when he handed her the bow
and arrow and told her they were hers, the sight of her face
worried him deeply.

"I'm a-goin' over thar an' if I like it an' thar's a place fer
you, I'll send the nag back fer you, too."

He spoke with manly condescension only to comfort her, but the
eager gladness that leaped pitifully from her eyes so melted him
that he added impulsively: "S'pose you git up behind me an' go
with me right now."

"Mavis ain't goin' now," said the old woman sharply. "You go on
whar you're goin' an' come back fer her."

"All right," said Jason, greatly relieved. "Take keer o'
yourselves."

With a kick he started the old nag and again pulled in.

"An' if you leave afore I git back, Mavis, I'm a-goin' to come
atter you, no matter whar you air--some day."

"Good-by," faltered the little girl, and she watched him ride down
the creek and disappear, and her tears came only when she felt the
old woman's arms around her.

"Don't you mind, honey."

Over ridge and mountain and up and down the rocky beds of streams
jogged Jason's old nag for two days until she carried him to the
top of the wooded ridge whence he looked down on the little
mountain town and the queer buildings of the settlement school.
Half an hour later St. Hilda saw him cross the creek below the
bridge, ride up to the foot-path gate, hitch his old mare, and
come straight to her where she sat--in a sturdy way that fixed her
interest instantly and keenly.

"I've come over hyeh to stay with ye," he said simply.

St. Hilda hesitated and distress kept her silent.

"My name's Jason Hawn. I come from t'other side o' the mountain
an' I hain't got no home."

"I'm sorry, little man," she said gently, "but we have no place
for you."

The boy's eyes darted to one side and the other.

"Shucks! I can sleep out thar in that woodshed. I hain't axin' no
favors. I got a leetle money an' I can work like a man."

Now, while St. Hilda's face was strong, her heart was divinely
weak and Jason saw it. Unhesitatingly he climbed the steps, handed
his rifle to her, sat down, and at once began taking stock of
everything about him--the boy swinging an axe at the wood-pile,
the boy feeding the hogs and chickens; another starting off on an
old horse with a bag of corn for the mill, another ploughing the
hill-side. Others were digging ditches, working in a garden,
mending a fence, and making cinder paths. But in all this his
interest was plainly casual until his eyes caught sight of a pile
of lumber at the door of the workshop below, and through the
windows the occasional gleam of some shining tool. Instantly one
eager finger shot out.

"I want to go down thar."

Good-humoredly St. Hilda took him, and when Jason looked upon boys
of his own age chipping, hewing, planing lumber, and making
furniture, so busy that they scarcely gave him a glance, St, Hilda
saw his eyes light and his fingers twitch.

"Gee!" he whispered with a catch of his breath, "this is the place
fer me."

But when they went back and Jason put his head into the big house,
St. Hilda saw his face darken, for in there boys were washing
dishes and scrubbing floors.

"Does all the boys have to do that?" he asked with great disgust.

"Oh, yes," she said.

Jason turned abruptly away from the door, and when he passed a
window of the cottage on the way back to her cabin and saw two
boys within making up beds, he gave a grunt of scorn and derision
and he did not follow her up the steps.

"Gimme back my gun," he said.

"Why, what's the matter, Jason?"

"This is a gals' school--hit hain't no place fer me."

It was no use for her to tell him that soldiers made their own
beds and washed their own dishes, for his short answer was:

"Mebbe they had to, 'cause thar wasn't no women folks around, but
he didn't," and his face was so hopelessly set and stubborn that
she handed him the old gun without another word. For a moment he
hesitated, lifting his solemn eyes to hers. "I want you to know
I'm much obleeged," he said. Then he turned away, and St. Hilda
saw him mount his old nag, climb the ridge opposite without
looking back, and pass over the summit.

Old Jason Hawn was sitting up in a chair when two days later
disgusted little Jason rode up to his gate.

"They wanted me to do a gal's work over thar," he explained
shortly, and the old man nodded grimly with sympathy and
understanding.

"I was lookin' fer ye to come back."

Old Aaron Honeycutt had been winged through the shoulder while the
lad was away and the feud score had been exactly evened by the
ambushing of another of the tribe. On this argument Arch Hawn was
urging a resumption of the truce, but both clans were armed and
watchful and everybody was looking for a general clash on the next
county-court day. The boy soon rose restlessly.

"Whar you goin'?"

"I'm a-goin' to look atter my corn."

At the forks of the creek the old circuit rider hailed Jason
gladly, and he, too, nodded with approval when he heard the reason
the boy had come back.

"I'll make ye a present o' the work I've done in yo' corn--bein'
as I must 'a' worked might' nigh an hour up thar yestiddy an' got
plumb tuckered out. I come might' nigh fallin' out, hit was so
steep, an' if I had, I reckon I'd 'a' broke my neck."

The old woman appeared on the porch and she, too, hailed the boy
with a bantering tone and a quizzical smile.

"One o' them fotched-on women whoop ye fer missin' yo' a-b-abs?"
she asked. Jason scowled.

"Whar's Mavis?" The old woman laughed teasingly.

"Why, hain't ye heerd the news? How long d'ye reckon a purty gal
like Mavis was a-goin' to wait fer you? 'Member that good-lookin'
little furrin feller who was down here from the settlemints? Well,
he come back an' tuk her away."

Jason knew the old woman was teasing him, and instead of being
angry, as she expected, he looked so worried and distressed that
she was sorry, and her rasping old voice became gentle with
affection.

"Mavis's gone to the settlemints, honey. Her daddy sent fer her
an' I made her go. She's whar she belongs--up thar with him an'
yo' mammy. Go put yo' hoss in the stable an' come an' live right
here with us."

Jason shook his head and without answer turned his horse down the
creek again. A little way down he saw three Honeycutts coming, all
armed, and he knew that to avoid passing his grandfather's house
they were going to cross the ridge and strike the head of their
own creek. One of them was a boy--"little Aaron"--less than two
years older than himself, and little Aaron not only had a pistol
buckled around him, but carried a Winchester across his saddle-
bow. The two men grinned and nodded good-naturedly to him, but the
boy Aaron pulled his horse across the road and stopped Jason, who
had stood many a taunt from him.

"Which side air you on NOW?" asked Aaron contemptuously.

"You git out o' my road!"

"Hit's my road now," said Aaron, tapping his Winchester, "an' I've
got a great notion o' makin' you git offen that ole bag o' bones
an' dance fer me." One of the Honeycutts turned in his saddle.

"Come on," he shouted angrily, "an' let that boy alone."

"All right," he shouted back, and then to his white, quivering,
helpless quarry:

"I'll let ye off this time, but next time--"

"I'll be ready fer ye," broke in Jason.

The lad's mind was made up now. He put the old nag in a lope down
the rocky creek. He did not even go to his grandfather's for
dinner, but turned at the river in a gallop for town. The rock-
pecker, and even Mavis, were gone from his mind, and the money in
his pocket was going, not for love or learning, but for pistol and
cartridge now.




IX

September in the Blue-grass. The earth cooling from the summer's
heat, the nights vigorous and chill, the fields greening with a
second spring. Skies long, low, hazy, and gently arched over
rolling field and meadow and woodland. The trees gray with the
dust that had sifted all summer long from the limestone turnpikes.
The streams shrunken to rivulets that trickled through crevices
between broad flat stones and oozed through beds of water-cress
and crow-foot, horse-mint and pickerel-weed, the wells low,
cisterns empty, and recourse for water to barrels and the sunken
ponds. The farmers cutting corn, still green, for stock, and
ploughing ragweed strongholds for the sowing of wheat. The hemp an
Indian village of gray wigwams. And a time of weeds--indeed the
heyday of weeds of every kind, and the harvest time for the king
weed of them all. Everywhere his yellow robes were hanging to
poles and drying in the warm sun. Everywhere led the conquering
war trail of the unkingly usurper, everywhere in his wake was
devastation. The iron-weed had given up his purple crown, and
yellow wheat, silver-gray oats, and rippling barley had fled at
the sight of his banner to the open sunny spaces as though to make
their last stand an indignant appeal that all might see. Even the
proud woodlands looked ragged and drooping, for here and there the
ruthless marauder had flanked one and driven a battalion into its
very heart, and here and there charred stumps told plainly how he
had overrun, destroyed, and ravished the virgin soil beneath. A
fuzzy little parasite was throttling the life of the Kentuckians'
hemp. A bewhiskered moralist in a far northern State would one day
try to drive the kings of his racing-stable to the plough. A
meddling band of fanatical teetotalers would overthrow his merry
monarch, King Barleycorn, and the harassed son of the Blue-grass,
whether he would or not, must turn to the new pretender who was in
the Kentuckians' midst, uninvited and self-throned.

And with King Tobacco were coming his own human vassals that were
to prove a new social discord in the land--up from the river-
bottoms of the Ohio and down from the foot-hills of the
Cumberland--to plant, worm, tend, and fit those yellow robes to be
stuffed into the mouth of the world and spat back again into the
helpless face of the earth. And these vassals were supplanting
native humanity as the plant was supplanting the native products
of the soil. And with them and the new king were due in time a
train of evils to that native humanity, creating disaffection,
dividing households against themselves, and threatening with ruin
the lordly social structure itself.

But, for all this, the land that early September morning was a
land of peace and plenty, and in field, meadow, and woodland the
most foreign note of the landscape was a spot of crimson in the
crotch of a high staked and ridered fence on the summit of a
little hill, and that spot was a little girl. She had on an old-
fashioned poke-bonnet of deep pink, her red dress was of old-
fashioned homespun, her stockings were of yarn, and her rough
shoes should have been on the feet of a boy. Had the vanished
forests and cane-brakes of the eighteenth century covered the
land, had the wild beasts and wild men come back to roam them, had
the little girl's home been a stockade on the edge of the
wilderness, she would have fitted perfectly to the time and the
scene, as a little daughter of Daniel Boone. As it was, she felt
no less foreign than she looked, for the strangeness of the land
and of the people still possessed her so that her native shyness
had sunk to depths that were painful. She had a new ordeal before
her now, for in her sinewy little hands were a paper bag, a first
reader, and a spelling-book, and she was on her way to school.
Beneath her the white turnpike wound around the hill and down into
a little hollow, and on the crest of the next low hill was a
little frame house with a belfry on top. Even while she sat there
with parted lips, her face in a tense dream and her eyes dark with
dread and indecision, the bell from the little school-house
clanged through the still air with a sudden, sharp summons that
was so peremptory and personal that she was almost startled from
her perch. Not daring to loiter any longer, she leaped lightly to
the ground and started in breathless haste up and over the hill.
As she went down it, she could see horses hitched to the fence
around the yard and school-children crowding upon the porch and
filing into the door. The last one had gone in before she reached
the school-house gate, and she stopped with a thumping heart that
quite failed her then and there, for she retreated backward
through the gate, to be sure that no one saw her, crept along the
stone wall, turned into a lane, and climbed a worm fence into the
woods behind the school-house. There she sat down on a log,
miserably alone, and over the sunny strange slopes of this new
world, on over the foothills, her mind flashed to the big far-away
mountains and, dropping her face into her hands, she began to sob
out her loneliness and sorrow. The cry did her good, and by and by
she lifted her head, rubbed her reddened eyes with the back of one
hand, half rose to go to the school-house, and sank helplessly
down on the thick grass by the side of the log. The sun beat
warmly and soothingly down on her. The grass and even the log
against her shoulders were warm and comforting, and the hum of
insects about her was so drowsy that she yawned and settled deeper
into the grass, and presently she passed into sleep and dreams of
Jason. Jason was in the feud. She could see him crouched in some
bushes and peering through them on the lookout evidently for some
Honeycutt; and slipping up the other side of the hill was a
Honeycutt looking for Jason. Somehow she knew it was the Honeycutt
who had slain the boy's father, and she saw the man creep through
the brush and worm his way on his belly to a stump above where
Jason sat. She saw him thrust his Winchester through the leaves,
she tried to shriek a warning to Jason, and she awoke so weak with
terror that she could hardly scramble to her feet. Just then the
air was rent with shrill cries, she saw school-boys piling over a
fence and rushing toward her hiding-place, and, her wits yet
ungathered, she turned and fled in terror down the hill, nor did
she stop until the cries behind her grew faint; and then she was
much ashamed of herself. Nobody was in pursuit of her--it was the
dream that had frightened her. She could almost step on the head
of her own shadow now, and that fact and a pang of hunger told her
it was noon. It was noon recess back at the school and those
school-boys were on their way to a playground. She had left her
lunch at the log where she slept, and so she made her way back to
it, just in time to see two boys pounce on the little paper bag
lying in the grass. There was no shyness about her then--that bag
was hers--and she flashed forward.

"Gimme that poke!"

The wrestling stopped and, startled by the cry and the apparition,
the two boys fell apart.

"What?" said the one with the bag in his hand, while the other
stared at Mavis with puzzled amazement.

"Gimme that poke!" blazed the girl, and the boy laughed, for the
word has almost passed from the vocabulary of the Blue-grass. He
held it high.

"Jump for it!" he teased.

"I hain't goin' to jump fer it--hit's mine."

Her hands clenched and she started slowly toward him.

"Give her the bag," said the other boy so imperatively that the
little girl stopped with a quick and trustful shift of her own
burden to him.

"She's got to jump for it!"

The other boy smiled, and it strangely seemed to Mavis that she
had seen that smile before.

"Oh, I reckon not," he said quietly, and in a trice the two boys
in a close, fierce grapple were rocking before her and the boy
with the bag went to the earth first.

"Gouge him!" shrieked the mountain girl, and she rushed to them
while they were struggling, snatched the bag from the loosened
fingers, and, seeing the other boys on a run for the scene, fled
for the lane. From the other side of the fence she saw the two
lads rise, one still smiling, the other crying with anger; the
school-bell clanged and she was again alone. Hurriedly she ate the
bacon and corn-bread in the bag and then she made her way back
along the lane, by the stone wall, through the school-house gate,
and gathering her courage with one deep breath, she climbed the
steps resolutely and stood before the open door.

The teacher, a tall man in a long black frock-coat, had his back
to her, the room was crowded, and she saw no vacant seat. Every
pair of eyes within was raised to her, and instantly she caught
another surprised and puzzled stare from the boy who had taken her
part a little while before. The teacher, seeing the attention of
his pupils fixed somewhere behind him, turned to see the quaint
figure, dismayed and helpless, in the doorway, and he went quickly
toward her.

"This way," he said kindly, and pointing to a seat, he turned
again to his pupils.

Still they stared toward the new-comer, and he turned again. The
little girl's flushed face was still hidden by her bonnet, but
before he reached her to tell her quietly she must take it off,
she had seen that all the heads about her were bare and was
pulling it off herself--disclosing a riotous mass of black hair,
combed straight back from her forehead and gathered into a Psyche
knot at the back of her head. Slowly the flush passed, but not for
some time did she lift the extraordinary lashes that veiled her
eyes to take a furtive glance about her. But, as the pupils bent
more to their books, she grew bolder and looked about oftener and
keenly, and she saw with her own eyes and in every pair of eyes
whose glance she met, how different she was from all the other
girls. For it was a look of wonder and amusement that she
encountered each time, and sometimes two girls would whisper
behind their hands and laugh, or one would nudge her desk-mate to
look around at the stranger, so that the flush came back to
Mavis's face and stayed there. The tall teacher saw, too, and
understood, and, to draw no more attention to her than was
necessary, he did not go near her until little recess. As he
expected, she did not move from her seat when the other pupils
trooped out, and when the room was empty he beckoned her to come
to his desk, and in a moment, with her two books clasped in her
hands, she stood shyly before him, meeting his kind gray searching
eyes with unwavering directness.

"You were rather late coming to school."

"I was afeerd." The teacher smiled, for her eyes were fearless.

"What is your name?"

"Mavis Hawn."

Her voice was slow, low, and rich, and in some wonder he half
unconsciously repeated the unusual name.

"Where do you live?"

"Down the road a piece--'bout a whoop an' a holler."

"What? Oh, I see."

He smiled, for she meant to measure distance by sound, and she had
used merely a variation of the "far cry" of Elizabethan days.

"Your father works in tobacco?" She nodded.

"You come from near the Ohio River?"

She looked puzzled.

"I come from the mountains."

"Oh!"

He understood now her dress and speech, and he was not surprised
at the answer to his next question.

"I hain't nuver been to school. Pap couldn't spare me."

"Can you read and write?"

"No," she said, but she flushed, and he knew straightway the
sensitiveness and pride with which he would have to deal.

"Well," he said kindly, "we will begin now."

And he took the alphabet and told her the names of several letters
and had her try to make them with a lead pencil, which she did
with such uncanny seriousness and quickness that the pity of it,
that in his own State such intelligence should be going to such
broadcast waste for the want of such elemental opportunities,
struck him deeply. The general movement to save that waste was
only just beginning, and in that movement he meant to play his
part. He was glad now to have under his own supervision one of
those mountaineers of whom, but for one summer, he had known so
little and heard so much--chiefly to their discredit--and he
determined then and there to do all he could for her. So he took
her back to her seat with a copy-book and pencil and told her to
go on with her work, and that he would go to see her father and
mother as soon as possible.

"I hain't got no mammy--hit's a step-mammy," she said, and she
spoke of the woman as of a horse or a cow, and again he smiled.
Then as he turned away he repeated her name to himself and with a
sudden wonder turned quickly back.

"I used to know some Hawns down in your mountains. A little fellow
named Jason Hawn used to go around with me all the time."

Her eyes filled and then flashed happily.

"Why, mebbe you air the rock-pecker?"

"The what?"

"The jologist. Jason's my cousin. I wasn't thar that summer.
Jason's always talkin' 'bout you."

"Well, well--I guess I am. That is curious."

"Jason's mammy was a Honeycutt an' she married my daddy an' they
run away," she went on eagerly, "an' I had to foller 'em."

"Where's Jason?" Again her eyes filled.

"I don't know."

John Burnham put his hand on her head gently and turned to his
desk. He rang the bell and when the pupils trooped back she was
hard at work, and she felt proud when she observed several girls
looking back to see what she was doing, and again she was
mystified that each face showed the same expression of wonder and
of something else that curiously displeased her, and she wondered
afresh why it was that everything in that strange land held always
something that she could never understand. But a disdainful
whisper came back to her that explained it all.

"Why, that new girl is only learning her a-b-c's," said a girl,
and her desk-mate turned to her with a quick rebuke.

"Don't--she'll hear you."

Mavis caught the latter's eyes that instant, and with a warm glow
at her heart looked her gratitude, and then she almost cried her
surprise aloud--it was the stranger-girl who had been in the
mountains--Marjorie. The girl looked back in a puzzled way, and a
moment later Mavis saw her turn to look again. This time the
mountain girl answered with a shy smile, and Marjorie knew her,
nodded in a gay, friendly way, and bent her head to her book.

Presently she ran her eyes down the benches where the boys sat,
and there was Gray waiting apparently for her to look around, for
he too nodded gayly to her, as though he had known her from the
start. The teacher saw the exchange of little civilities and he
was much puzzled, especially when, the moment school was over, he
saw the lad hurry to catch Marjorie, and the two then turn
together toward the little stranger. Both thrust out their hands,
and the little mountain girl, so unaccustomed to polite
formalities, was quite helpless with embarrassment, so the teacher
went over to help her out and Gray explained:

"Marjorie and I stayed with her grandfather, and didn't we have a
good time, Marjorie?"

Marjorie nodded with some hesitation, and Gray went on:

"How--how is he now?"

"Grandpap's right peart now."

"And how's your cousin--Jason?"

The question sent such a sudden wave of homesickness through Mavis
that her answer was choked, and Marjorie understood and put her
arm around Mavis's shoulder.

"You must be lonely up here. Where do you live?" And when she
tried to explain Gray broke in.

"Why, you must be one of our ten--you must live on our farm. Isn't
that funny?"

"And I live further down the road across the pike," said Marjorie.

"In that great big house in the woods?"

"Yes," nodded Marjorie, "and you must come to see me."

Mavis's eyes had the light of gladness in them now, and through
them looked a grateful heart. Outside, Gray got Marjorie's pony
for her, the two mounted, rode out the gate and went down the pike
at a gallop, and Marjorie whirled in her saddle to wave her bonnet
back at the little mountaineer. The teacher, who stood near
watching them, turned to go back and close up the school-house.

"I'm coming to see your father, and we'll get some books, and you
are going to study so hard that you won't have time to get
homesick any more," he said kindly, and Mavis started down the
road, climbed the staked and ridered fence, and made her way
across the fields. She had been lonely, and now homesickness came
back to her worse than ever. She wondered about Jason--where he
was and what he was doing and whether she would ever see him
again. The memory of her parting with him came back to her--how he
looked as she saw him for the last time sitting on his old nag,
sturdy and apparently unmoved, and riding out of her sight in just
that way; and she heard again his last words as though they were
sounding then in her ears:

"I'm a-goin' to come an' git you--some day."

Since that day she had heard of him but once, and that was lately,
when Arch Hawn had come to see her father and the two had talked a
long time. They were all well, Arch said, down in the mountains.
Jason had come back from the settlement school. Little Aaron
Honeycutt had bantered him in the road and Jason had gone wild. He
had galloped down to town, bought a Colt's forty-five and a pint
of whiskey, had ridden right up to old Aaron Honeycutt's gate,
shot off his pistol, and dared little Aaron to come out and fight.
Little Aaron wanted to go, but old Aaron held him back, and Jason
sat on his nag at the gate and "cussed out" the whole tribe, and
swore "he'd kill every dad-blasted one of 'em if only to git the
feller who shot his daddy." Old Aaron had behaved mighty well, and
he and old Jason had sent each other word that they would keep
both the boys out of the trouble. Then Arch had brought about
another truce and little Jason had worked his crop and was making
a man of himself. It was Archer Hawn who had insisted that Mavis
herself should go to school and had agreed to pay all her
expenses, but in spite of her joy at that, she was heart-broken
when he was gone, and when she caught her step-mother weeping in
the kitchen a vague sympathy had drawn them for the first time a
little nearer together.

From the top of the little hill her new home was visible across a
creek and by the edge of a lane. As she crossed a foot-bridge and
made her way noiselessly along the dirt road she heard voices
around a curve of the lane and she came upon a group of men
leaning against a fence. In the midst of them was her father, and
they were arguing with him earnestly and he was shaking his head.

"Them toll-gates hain't a-hurtin' me none," she heard him drawl.
"I don't understand this business, an' I hain't goin' to git mixed
up in hit."

Then he saw her coming and he stopped, and the others looked at
her uneasily, she thought, as if wondering what she might have
heard.

"Go on home, Mavis," he said shortly, and as she passed on no one
spoke until she was out of hearing. Some mischief was afoot, but
she was not worried, nor was her interest aroused at all.

A moment later she could see her step-mother seated on her porch
and idling in the warm sun. The new home was a little frame house,
neat and well built. There was a good fence around the yard and
the garden, and behind the garden was an orchard of peach-trees
and apple-trees. The house was guttered and behind the kitchen was
a tiny grape-arbor, a hen-house, and a cistern--all strange
appurtenances to Mavis. The two spoke only with a meeting of the
eyes, and while the woman looked her curiosity she asked no
questions, and Mavis volunteered no information.

"Did you see Steve a-talkin' to some fellers down the road?"

Mavis nodded.

"Did ye hear whut they was talkin' about?"

"Somethin' about the toll-gates."

A long silence followed.

"The teacher said he was comin' over to see you and pap."

"Whut fer?"

"I dunno."

After another silence Mavis went on:

"The teacher is that rock-pecker Jason was always a-talkin'
'bout."

The woman's interest was aroused now, for she wondered if he were
coming over to ask her any troublesome questions.

"Well, ain't that queer!"

"An' that boy an' gal who was a-stayin' with grandpap was thar at
school too, an' she axed me to come over an' see her." This the
step-mother was not surprised to hear, for she knew on whose farm
they were living and why they were there, and she had her own
reasons for keeping the facts from Mavis.

"Well, you oughter go."

"I am a-goin'."

Mavis missed the mountains miserably when she went to bed that
night--missed the gloom and lift of them through her window, and
the rolling sweep of the land under the moon looked desolate and
lonely and more than ever strange. A loping horse passed on the
turnpike, and she could hear it coming on the hard road far away
and going far away; then a buggy and then a clattering group of
horsemen, and indeed everything heralded its approach at a great
distance. She missed the stillness of the hills, for on the night
air were the barking of dogs, whinny of horses, lowing of cattle,
the song of a night-prowling negro, and now and then the screech
of a peacock. She missed Jason wretchedly, too, for there had been
so much talk of him during the day, and she went to sleep with her
lashes wet with tears. Some time during the night she was awakened
by pistol-shots, and her dream of Jason made her think that she
was at home again. But no mountains met her startled eyes through
the window. Instead a red glare hung above the woods, there was
the clatter of hoofs on the pike, and flames shot above the tops
of the trees. Nor could it be a forest fire such as was common at
home, for the woods were not thick enough. This land, it seemed,
had troubles of its own, as did her mountains, but at least folks
did not burn folks' houses in the hills.




X

On the top of a bushy foot-hill the old nag stopped, lifted her
head, and threw her ears forward as though to gaze, like any
traveller to a strange land, upon the rolling expanse beneath, and
the lad on her back voiced her surprise and his own with a long,
low whistle of amazement. He folded his hands on the pommel of his
saddle and the two searched the plains below long and hard, for
neither knew so much level land was spread out anywhere on the
face of the earth. The lad had a huge pistol buckled around him;
he looked half dead with sleeplessness and the old nag was weary
and sore, for Jason was in flight from trouble back in those
hills. He had kept his promise to his grandfather that summer, as
little Aaron Honeycutt had kept his. Neither had taken part in the
feud, and even after the truce came, each had kept out of the
other's way. When Jason's corn was gathered there was nothing for
him to do and the lad had grown restless. While roaming the woods
one day, a pheasant had hurtled over his head. He had followed it,
sighted it, and was sinking down behind a bowlder to get a rest
for his pistol when the voices of two Honeycutts who had met in
the road just under him stopped his finger on the trigger.

"That boy's a-goin' to bust loose some day," said one voice. "I've
heerd him a-shootin' at a tree every day for a month up thar above
his corn-field."

"Oh, no, he ain't," said the other. "He's just gittin' ready fer
the man who shot his daddy."

"Well, who the hell WAS the feller?"

The other man laughed, lowered his voice, and the heart of the
listening lad thumped painfully against the bowlder under him.

"Well, I hain't nuver told hit afore, but I seed with my own eyes
a feller sneakin' outen the bushes ten minutes atter the shot was
fired, an' hit was Babe Honeycutt."

A low whistle followed and the two rode on. The pheasant squatted
to his limb undisturbed, and the lad lay gripping the bowlder with
both hands. He rose presently, his face sick but resolute, slipped
down into the road, and, swaying his head with rage, started up
the hill toward the Honeycutt cove. On top of the hill the road
made a sharp curve and around that curve, as fate would have it,
slouched the giant figure of his mother's brother. Babe shouted
pleasantly, stopped in sheer amazement when he saw Jason whip his
revolver from his holster, and, with no movement to draw his own,
leaped for the bushes. Coolly the lad levelled, and when his
pistol spoke, Babe's mighty arms flew above his head and the boy
heard his heavy body crash down into the undergrowth. In the
terrible stillness that followed the boy stood shaking in his
tracks--stood until he heard the clatter of horses' hoofs in the
creek-bed far below. The two Honeycutts had heard the shot, they
were coming back to see what the matter was, and Jason sped as if
winged back down the creek. He had broken the truce, his
grandfather would be in a rage, the Honeycutts would be after him,
and those hills were no place for him. So all that day and through
all that night he fled for the big settlements of the Blue-grass
and but half consciously toward his mother and Mavis Hawn. The
fact that Babe was his mother's brother weighed on his mind but
little, for the webs of kinship get strangely tangled in a
mountain feud and his mother could not and would not blame him.
Nor was there remorse or even regret in his heart, but rather the
peace of an oath fulfilled--a duty done.

The sun was just coming up over the great black bulks which had
given the boy forth that morning to a new world. Back there its
mighty rays were shattered against them, and routed by their
shadows had fought helplessly on against the gloom of deep
ravines--those fortresses of perpetual night--but, once they
cleared the eminence where Jason sat, the golden arrows took level
flight, it seemed, for the very end of the world. This was the
land of the Blue-grass--the home of the rock-pecker, home of the
men who had robbed him of his land, the refuge to his Cousin
Steve, his mother, and little Mavis, and now their home. He could
see no end of the land, for on and on it rolled, and on and on as
far as it rolled were the low woodlands, the fields of cut corn--
more corn than he knew the whole world held--and pastures and
sheep and cattle and horses, and houses and white fences and big
white barns. Little Jason gazed but he could not get his fill.
Perhaps the old nag, too, knew those distant fields for corn, for
with a whisk of her stubby tail she started of her own accord
before the lad could dig his bare heels into her bony sides, and
went slowly down. The log cabins had disappeared one by one, and
most of the houses he now saw were framed. One, however, a relic
of pioneer times, was of stone, and at that the boy looked
curiously. Several were of red brick and one had a massive portico
with great towering columns, and at that he looked more curiously
still. Darkies were at work in the fields. He had seen only two or
three in his life, he did not know there were so many in the world
as he saw that morning, and now his skin ruffled with some
antagonism ages deep. Everybody he met in the road or passed
working in the fields gave him a nod and looked curiously at his
big pistol, but nobody asked him his name or where he was going or
what his business was; at that he wondered, for everybody in the
mountains asked those questions of the stranger, and he had all
the lies he meant to tell, ready for any emergency to cover his
tracks from any possible pursuers. By and by he came to a road
that stunned him. It was level and smooth and made, as he saw, of
rocks pounded fine, and the old nag lifted her feet and put them
down gingerly. And this road never stopped, and there was no more
dirt road at all. By and by he noticed running parallel with the
turnpike two shining lines of iron, and his curiosity so got the
better of him that he finally got off his old nag and climbed the
fence to get a better look at them. They were about four feet
apart, fastened to thick pieces of timber, and they, too, like
everything else, ran on and on, and he mounted and rode along them
much puzzled. Presently far ahead of him there was a sudden,
unearthly shriek, the rumbling sound of a coming storm, rolling
black smoke beyond the crest of a little hill, and a swift huge
mass swept into sight and, with another fearful blast, bore
straight at him. The old nag snorted with terror, and in terror
dashed up the hill, while the boy lay back and pulled helplessly
on the reins. When he got her halted the thing had disappeared,
and both boy and beast turned heads toward the still terrible
sounds of its going. It was the first time either had ever seen a
railroad train, and the lad, with a sickly smile that even he had
shared the old nag's terror, got her back into the road. At the
gate sat a farmer in his wagon and he was smiling.

"Did she come purty near throwin' you?"

"Huh!" grunted Jason contemptuously. "Whut was that?"

The farmer looked incredulous, but the lad was serious.

"That was a railroad train."

"Danged if I didn't think hit was a saw-mill comin' atter me."

The farmer laughed and looked as though he were going to ask
questions, but he clucked to his horses and drove on, and Jason
then and there swore a mighty oath to himself never again to be
surprised by anything else he might see in this new land. All that
day he rode slowly, giving his old nag two hours' rest at noon,
and long before sundown he pulled up before a house in a cross-
roads settlement, for the mountaineer does not travel much after
nightfall.

"I want to git to stay all night," he said.

The man smiled and understood, for no mountaineer's door is ever
closed to the passing stranger and he cannot understand that any
door can be closed to him. Jason told the truth that night, for he
had to ask questions himself--he was on his way to see his mother
and his step-father and his cousin, who had moved down from the
mountains, and to his great satisfaction he learned that it was a
ride of but three hours more to Colonel Pendleton's.

When his host showed him to his room, the boy examined his pistol
with such care while he was unbuckling it, that, looking up, he
found a half-smile, half-frown, and no little suspicion, in his
host's face; but he made no explanation, and he slept that night
with one ear open, for he was not sure yet that no Honeycutt might
be following him.

Toward morning he sprang from bed wide-awake, alert, caught up his
pistol and crept to the window. Two horsemen were at the gate. The
door opened below him, his host went out, and the three talked in
whispers for a while. Then the horsemen rode away, his host came
back into the house, and all was still again. For half an hour the
boy waited, his every nerve alive with suspicion. Then he quietly
dressed, left half a dollar on the washstand, crept stealthily
down the stairs and out to the stable, and was soon pushing his
old nag at a weary gallop through the dark.




XI

The last sunset had been clear and Jack Frost had got busy. All
the preceding day the clouds had hung low and kept the air chill
so that the night was good for that arch-imp of Satan who has got
himself enshrined in the hearts of little children. At dawn Jason
saw the robe of pure white which the little magician had spun and
drawn close to the breast of the earth. The first light turned it
silver and showed it decked with flowers and jewels, that the old
mother might mistake it, perhaps, for a wedding-gown instead of a
winding-sheet; but the sun, knowing better, lifted, let loose his
tiny warriors, and from pure love of beauty smote it with one
stroke gold, and the battle ended with the blades of grass and the
leaves in their scarlet finery sparkling with the joy of another
day's deliverance and the fields grown gray and aged in a single
night. Before the fight was quite over that morning, saddle-horses
were stepping from big white barns in the land Jason was entering,
and being led to old-fashioned stiles; buggies, phaetons, and
rock-aways were emerging from turnpike gates; and rabbit-hunters
moved, shouting, laughing, running races, singing, past fields
sober with autumn, woods dingy with oaks and streaked with the
fire of sumac and maple. On each side of the road new hemp lay in
shining swaths, while bales of last year's crop were on the way to
market along the roads. The farmers were turning over the soil for
the autumn sowing of wheat, corn-shucking was over, and ragged
darkies were straggling from the fields back to town. From every
point the hunters came, turning in where a big square brick house
with a Grecian portico stood far back in a wooded yard, with a
fish-pond on one side and a great smooth lawn on the other. On the
steps between the columns stood Colonel Pendleton and Gray and
Marjorie welcoming the guests; the men, sturdy country youths,
good types of the beef-eating young English squire--sunburnt
fellows with big frames, open faces, fearless eyes, and a manner
that was easy, cordial, kindly, independent; the girls midway
between the types of brunette and blonde, with a leaning toward
the latter type, with hair that had caught the light of the sun,
radiant with freshness and good health and strength; round of
figure, clear of eye and skin, spirited, soft of voice, and slow
of speech. Soon a cavalcade moved through a side-gate of the yard,
through a Blue-grass woodland, and into a sweep of stubble and
ragweed; and far up the road on top of a little hill the mountain
boy stopped his old mare and watched a strange sight in a strange
land--a hunt without dog, stick, or gun. A high ringing voice
reached his ears clearly, even that far away:

"Form a line!"

And the wondering lad saw man and woman aligning themselves like
cavalry fifteen feet apart and moving across the field--the men in
leggings or high boots, riding with the heel low and the toes
turned according to temperament; the girls with a cap, a derby, or
a beaver with a white veil, and the lad's eye caught one of them
quickly, for a red tam-o'-shanter had slipped from her shining
hair and a broad white girth ran around both her saddle and her
horse. There was one man on a sorrel mule and he was the host at
the big house, for Colonel Pendleton had surrendered every horse
he had to a guest. Suddenly there came a yell--the rebel yell--and
a horse leaped forward. Other horses leaped too, everybody yelled
in answer, and the cavalcade swept forward. There was a massing of
horses, the white girth flashing in the midst of the melee, a
great crash and much turning, twisting, and sawing of bits, and
then all dashed the other way, the white girth in the lead, and
the boy's lips fell apart in wonder. A black thoroughbred was
making a wide sweep, an iron-gray was cutting in behind, and all
were sweeping toward him. Far ahead of them he saw a frightened
rabbit streaking through the weeds. As it passed him the lad gave
a yell, dug his heels into the old mare, and himself swept down
the pike, drawing his revolver and firing as he rode. Five times
the pistol spoke to the wondering hunters in pursuit, at the fifth
the rabbit tumbled heels over head and a little later the hunters
pulled their horses in around a boy holding a rabbit high in one
hand, a pistol in the other, and his eager face flushed with pride
in his marksmanship and the comradeship of the hunt. But the flush
died into quick paleness, so hostile were the faces, so hostile
were the voices that assailed him, and he dropped the rabbit
quickly and began shoving fresh cartridges into the chambers of
his gun.

"What do you mean, boy," shouted an angry voice, "shooting that
rabbit?"

The boy looked dazed.

"Why, wasn't you atter him?"

He looked around and in a moment he knew several of them, but
nobody, it was plain, remembered him.

The girl with the white girth was Marjorie, the boy on the black
thoroughbred was Gray, and coming in an awkward gallop on the
sorrel mule was Colonel Pendleton. None of these people could mean
to do him harm, so Jason dropped his pistol in his holster and,
with a curious dignity for so ragged an atom, turned in silence
away, and only the girl with the white girth noticed the quiver of
his lips and the angry starting of tears.

As he started to mount the old mare, the excited yells coming from
the fields were too much for him, and he climbed back on the fence
to watch. The hunters had parted in twain, the black thoroughbred
leading one wing, the iron-gray the other--both after a scurrying
rabbit. Close behind the black horse was the white girth and close
behind was a pony in full run. Under the brow of the hill they
swept and parallel with the fence, and as they went by the boy
strained eager widening eyes, for on the pony was his cousin Mavis
Hawn, bending over her saddle and yelling like mad. This way and
that poor Mollie swerved, but every way her big startled eyes
turned, that way she saw a huge beast and a yelling demon bearing
down on her. Again the horses crashed, the pony in the very midst.
Gray threw himself from his saddle and was after her on foot. Two
others swung from their saddles, Mollie made several helpless
hops, and the three scrambled for her. The riders in front cried
for those behind to hold their horses back, but they crowded on
and Jason rose upright on the fence to see who should be trampled
down. Poor Mollie was quite hemmed in now, there was no way of
escape, and instinctively she shrank frightened to the earth. That
was the crucial instant, and down went Gray on top of her as
though she were a foot-ball, and the quarry was his. Jason saw him
give her one blow behind her long ears and then, holding a little
puff of down aloft, look about him, past Marjorie to Mavis. A
moment later he saw that rabbit's tail pinned to Mavis's cap, and
a sudden rage of jealousy nearly shook him from the fence. He was
too far away to see Marjorie's smile, but he did see her eyes rove
about the field and apparently catch sight of him, and as the rest
turned to the hunt she rode straight for him, for she remembered
the distress of his face and he looked lonely.

"Little boy," she called, and the boy stared with amazement and
rage, but the joke was too much for him and he laughed scornfully.

"Little gal," he mimicked, "air you a-talkin' to me?"

The girl gasped, reddened, lifted her chin haughtily, and raised
her riding-whip to whirl away from the rude little stranger, but
his steady eyes held hers until a flash of recognition came--and
she smiled.

"Well, I never--Uncle Bob!" she cried excitedly and imperiously,
and as the colonel lumbered toward her on his sorrel mount, she
called with sparkling eyes, "don't you know him?"

The puzzled face of the colonel broke into a hearty smile.

"Well, bless my soul, it's Jason. You've come up to see your
folks?"

And then he explained what Marjorie meant to explain.

"We're not hunting with guns--we just chase 'em. Hang your
artillery on a fence-rail, bring your horse through that gate, and
join us."

He turned and Marjorie, with him, called back over her shoulder:
"Hurry up now, Jason."

Little Jason sat still, but he saw Marjorie ride straight for the
pony, he heard her cry to Mavis, saw her wave one hand toward him,
and then Mavis rode for him at a gallop, waving her whip to him as
she came. The boy gave no answering signal, but sat still, hard-
eyed, cool. Before she was within twenty yards of him he had taken
in every detail of the changes in her and the level look of his
eyes stopped her happy cry, and made her grow quite pale with the
old terror of giving him offence. Her hair looked different, her
clothes were different, she wore gloves, and she had a stick in
one hand with a head like a cane and a loop of leather at the
other end. For these drawbacks, the old light in her eyes and face
quite failed to make up, for while Jason looked, Mavis was
looking, too, and the boy saw her eyes travelling him down from
head to foot: somehow he was reminded of the way Marjorie had
looked at him back in the mountains and somehow he felt that the
change that he resented in Mavis went deeper than her clothes. The
morbidly sensitive spirit of the mountaineer in him was hurt, the
chasm yawned instead of closing, and all he said shortly was:

"Whar'd you git them new-fangled things?"

"Marjorie give 'em to me. She said fer you to bring yo' hoss in--
hit's more fun than I ever knowed in my life up here."

"Hit is?" he half-sneered. "Well, you git back to yo' high-
falutin' friends an' tell 'em I don't hunt nothin' that-a-way."

"I'll stop right now an' go home with ye. I guess you've come to
see yo' mammy."

"Well, I hain't ridin' aroun' just fer my health exactly."

He had suddenly risen on the fence as the cries in the field
swelled in a chorus. Mavis saw how strong the temptation within
him was, and so, when he repeated for her to "go on back," the old
habit of obedience turned her, but she knew he would soon follow.

The field was going mad now, horses were dashing and crashing
together, the men were swinging to the ground and were pushed and
trampled in a wild clutch for Mollie's long ears, and Jason could
see that the contest between them was who should get the most
game. The big mule was threshing the weeds like a tornado, and
crossing the field at a heavy gallop he stopped suddenly at a
ditch, the girth broke, and the colonel went over the long ears.
There was a shriek of laughter, in which Jason from his perch
joined, as with a bray of freedom the mule made for home.
Apparently that field was hunted out now, and when the hunters
crossed another pike and went into another field too far away for
the boy to see the fun, he mounted his old mare and rode slowly
after them. A little later Mavis heard a familiar yell, and Jason
flew by her with his pistol flopping on his hip, his hat in his
hand, and his face frenzied and gone wild. The thoroughbred passed
him like a swallow, but the rabbit twisted back on his trail and
Mavis saw Marjorie leap lightly from her saddle, Jason flung
himself from his, and then both were hidden by the crush of horses
around them, while from the midst rose sharp cries of warning and
fear.

She saw Gray's face white with terror, and then she saw Marjorie
picking herself up from the ground and Jason swaying dizzily on
his feet with a rabbit in his hand.

"'Tain't nothin'," he said stoutly, and he grinned his admiration
openly for Marjorie, who looked such anxiety for him. "You ain't
afeerd o' nothin', air ye, an' I reckon this rabbit tail is a-
goin' to you," and he handed it to her and turned to his horse.
The boy had jerked Marjorie from under the thoroughbred's hoofs
and then gone on recklessly after the rabbit, getting a glancing
blow from one of those hoofs himself.

Marjorie smiled.

"Thank you, little--man," and Jason grinned again, but his head
was dizzy and he did not ride after the crowd.

"I'm afeerd fer this ole nag," he lied to Colonel Pendleton, for
he was faint at the stomach and the world had begun to turn
around. Then he made one clutch for the old nag's mane, missed it,
and rolled senseless to the ground.

Not long afterward he opened his eyes to find his head in the
colonel's lap, Marjorie bathing his forehead with a wet
handkerchief, and Gray near by, still a little pale from remorse
for his carelessness and Marjorie's narrow escape, and Mavis the
most unconcerned of all--and he was much ashamed. Rudely he
brushed Marjorie's consoling hand away and wriggled away from the
colonel to his knees.

"Shucks!" he said, with great disgust.

The shadows were stretching fast, it was too late to try another
field, so back they started through the radiant air, laughing,
talking, bantering, living over the incidents of the day, the men
with one leg swung for rest over the pommel of their saddles, the
girls with habits disordered and torn, hair down, and all tired,
but all flushed, clear-eyed, happy. The leaves--russet, gold and
crimson--were dropping to the autumn-greening earth, the sunlight
was as yellow as the wings of a butterfly, and on the horizon was
a faint haze that shadowed the coming Indian summer. But still it
was warm enough for a great spread on the lawn, and what a feast
for mountain eyes--chicken, turkey, cold ham, pickles, croquettes,
creams, jellies, beaten biscuits. And what happy laughter and
thoughtful courtesy and mellow kindness--particularly to the
little mountain pair, for in the mountains they had given the
Pendletons the best they had and now the best was theirs. Inside
fires were being lighted in the big fireplaces, and quiet, solid,
old-fashioned English comfort everywhere the blaze brought out.

Already two darky fiddlers were waiting on the back porch for a
dram, and when the darkness settled the fiddles were talking old
tunes and nimble feet were busy. Little Jason did his wonderful
dancing and Gray did his; and round about, the window-seats and
the tall columns of the porch heard again from lovers what they
had been listening to for so long. At midnight the hunters rode
forth again in pairs into the crisp, brilliant air and under the
kindly moon, Mavis jogging along beside Jason on Marjorie's pony,
for Marjorie would not have it otherwise. No wonder that Mavis
loved the land.

"I jerked the gal outen the way," explained Jason, "'cause she was
a gal an' had no business messin' with men folks."

"Of co'se," Mavis agreed, for she was just as contemptuous as he
over the fuss that had been made of the incident.

"But she ain't afeerd o' nothin'."

This was a little too much.

"I ain't nuther."

"Co'se you ain't."

There was no credit for Mavis--her courage was a matter of course;
but with the stranger-girl, a "furriner"--that was different.
There was silence for a while.

"Wasn't it lots o' fun, Jasie?"

"Shore!" was the absent-minded answer, for Jason was looking at
the strangeness of the night. It was curious not to see the big
bulks of the mountains and to see so many stars. In the mountains
he had to look straight up to see stars at all and now they hung
almost to the level of his eyes.

"How's the folks?" asked Mavis.

"Stirrin'. Air ye goin' to school up here?"

"Yes, an' who you reckon the school-teacher is?"

Jason shook his head.

"The jologist."

"Well, by Heck."

"An' he's always axin' me about you an' if you air goin' to
school."

For a while more they rode in silence.

"I went to that new furrin school down in the mountains," yawned
the boy, "fer 'bout two hours. They're gittin' too high-falutin'
to suit me. They tried to git me to wear gal's stockin's like they
do up here an' I jes' laughed at 'em. Then they tried to git me to
make up beds an' I tol' 'em I wasn't goin' to wear gal's clothes
ner do a gal's work, an' so I run away."

He did not tell his reason for leaving the mountains altogether,
for Mavis, too, was a girl, and he did not confide in women--not
yet.

But the girl was woman enough to remember that the last time she
had seen him he had said that he was going to come for her some
day. There was no sign of that resolution, however, in either his
manner or his words now, and for some reason she was rather glad.

"Every boy wears clothes like that up here. They calls 'em
knickerbockers."

"Huh!" grunted Jason. "Hit sounds like 'em."

"Air ye still shootin' at that ole tree?"

"Yep, an' I kin hit the belly-band two shots out o' three."

Mavis raised her dark eyes with a look of apprehension, for she
knew what that meant; when he could hit it three times running he
was going after the man who had killed his father. But she asked
no more questions, for while the boy could not forbear to boast
about his marksmanship, further information was beyond her sphere
and she knew it.

When they came to the lane leading to her home, Jason turned down
it of his own accord.

"How'd you know whar we live?"

"I was here this mornin' an' I seed my mammy. Yo' daddy wasn't
thar."

Mavis smiled silently to herself; he had found out thus where she
was and he had followed her. At the little stable Jason unsaddled
the horses and turned both out in the yard while Mavis went
within, and Steve Hawn appeared at the door in his underclothes
when Jason stepped upon the porch.

"Hello, Jason!"

"Hello, Steve!" answered the boy, but they did not shake hands,
not because of the hard feeling between them, but because it was
not mountain custom.

"Come on in an' lay down."

Mavis had gone upstairs, but she could hear the voices below her.
If Mavis had been hesitant about asking questions, as had been the
boy's mother as well, Steve was not. "Whut'd you come up here
fer?"

"Same reason as you once left the mountains--I got inter trouble."

Steve was startled and he frowned, but the boy gazed coolly back
into his angry eyes.

"Whut kind o' trouble?"

"Same as you--I shot a feller," said the boy imperturbably.

Little Mavis heard a groan from her step-mother, an angry oath
from her father, and a curious pang of horror pierced her.

Silence followed below and the girl lay awake and trembling in her
bed.

"Who was it?" Steve asked at last.

"That's my business," said little Jason. The silence was broken no
more, and Mavis lay with new thoughts and feelings racking her
brain and her heart. Once she had driven to town with Marjorie and
Gray, and a man had come to the carriage and cheerily shaken hands
with them both. After he was gone Gray looked very grave and
Marjorie was half unconsciously wiping her right hand with her
handkerchief.

"He killed a man," was Marjorie's horrified whisper of
explanation, and now if they should hear what she had heard they
would feel the same way toward her own cousin, Jason Hawn. She had
never had such a feeling in the mountains, but she had it now, and
she wondered whether she could ever be quite the same toward Jason
again.




XII

Christmas was approaching and no greater wonder had ever dawned on
the lives of Mavis and Jason than the way these people in the
settlements made ready for it. In the mountains many had never
heard of Christmas and few of Christmas stockings, Santa Claus,
and catching Christmas gifts--not even the Hawns, But Mavis and
Jason had known of Christmas, had celebrated it after the mountain
way, and knew, moreover, what the Blue-grass children did not
know, of old Christmas as well, which came just twelve days after
the new. At midnight of old Christmas, so the old folks in the
mountains said, the elders bloomed and the beasts of the field and
the cattle in the barn kneeled lowing and moaning, and once the
two children had slipped out of their grandfather's house to the
barn and waited to watch the cattle and to listen to them, but
they suffered from the cold, and when they told what they had done
next morning, their grandfather said they had not waited long
enough, for it happened just at midnight; so when Mavis and Jason
told Marjorie and Gray of old Christmas they all agreed they would
wait up this time till midnight sure.

As for new Christmas in the hills, the women paid little attention
to it, and to the men it meant "a jug of liquor, a pistol in each
hand, and a galloping nag." Always, indeed, it meant drinking, and
target-shooting to see "who should drink and who should smell,"
for the man who made a bad shot got nothing but a smell from the
jug until he had redeemed himself. So, Steve Hawn and Jason got
ready in their own way and Mavis and Martha Hawn accepted their
rude preparations as a matter of course.

At four o'clock in the afternoon before Christmas Eve darkies
began springing around the corners of the twin houses, and from
closets and from behind doors, upon the white folks and shouting
"Christmas gift," for to the one who said the greeting first the
gift came, and it is safe to say that no darky in the Blue-grass
was caught that day. And the Pendleton clan made ready to make
merry. Kinspeople gathered at the old general's ancient home and
at the twin houses on either side of the road. Stockings were hung
up and eager-eyed children went to restless dreams of their
holiday king. Steve Hawn, too, had made ready with boxes of
cartridges and two jugs of red liquor, and he and Jason did not
wait for the morrow to make merry. And Uncle Arch Hawn happened to
come in that night, but he was chary of the cup, and he frowned
with displeasure at Jason, who was taking his dram with Steve like
a man, and he showed displeasure before he rode away that night by
planting a thorn in the very heart of Jason's sensitive soul. When
he had climbed on his horse he turned to Jason.

"Jason," he drawled, "you can come back home now when you git good
an' ready. Thar ain't no trouble down thar just now, an' Babe
Honeycutt ain't lookin' fer you."

Jason gasped. He had not dared to ask a single question about the
one thing that had been torturing his curiosity and his soul, and
Arch was bringing it out before them all as though it were the
most casual and unimportant matter in the world. Steve and his
wife looked amazed and Mavis's heart quickened.

"Babe ain't lookin' fer ye," Arch drawled on, "he's laughin' at
ye. I reckon you thought you'd killed him, but he stumbled over a
root an' fell down just as you shot. He says you missed him a
mile. He says you couldn't hit a barn in plain daylight." And he
started away.

A furious oath broke from Jason's gaping mouth, Steve laughed, and
if the boy's pistol had been in his hand, he might in his rage
have shown Arch as he rode away what his marksmanship could be
even in the dark, but even with his uncle's laugh, too, coming
back to him he had to turn quickly into the house and let his
wrath bite silently inward.

But Mavis's eyes were like moist stars.

"Oh, Jasie, I'm so glad," she said, but he only stared and turned
roughly on toward the jug in the corner.

Before day next morning the children in the big houses were making
the walls ring with laughter and shouts of joy. Rockets whizzed
against the dawn, fire-crackers popped unceasingly, and now and
then a loaded anvil boomed through the crackling air, but there
was no happy awakening for little Jason. All night his pride had
smarted like a hornet sting, his sleep was restless and bitter
with dreams of revenge, and the hot current in his veins surged
back and forth in the old channel of hate for the slayer of his
father. Next morning his blood-shot eyes opened fierce and sullen
and he started the day with a visit to the whiskey jug: then he
filled his belt and pockets with cartridges.

Early in the afternoon Marjorie and Gray drove over with Christmas
greetings and little presents. Mavis went out to meet them, and
when Jason half-staggered out to the gate, the visitors called to
him merrily and became instantly grave and still. Mavis flushed,
Marjorie paled with horror and disgust, Gray flamed with wonder
and contempt and quickly whipped up his horse--the mountain boy
was drunk.

Jason stared after them, knowing something had suddenly gone
wrong, and while he said nothing, his face got all the angrier, he
rushed in for his belt and pistol, and shaking his head from side
to side, swaggered out to the stable and began saddling his old
mare. Mavis stood in the doorway frightened and ashamed, the boy's
mother pleaded with him to come into the house and lie down, but
without a word to either he mounted with difficulty and rode down
the road. Steve Hawn, who had been silently watching him, laughed.

"Let him alone--he ain't goin' to do nothin'." Down the road the
boy rode with more drunken swagger than his years in the wake of
Marjorie and Gray--unconsciously in the wake of anything that was
even critical, much less hostile, and in front of Gray's house he
pulled up and gazed long at the pillars and the broad open door,
but not a soul was in sight and he paced slowly on. A few hundred
yards down the turnpike he pulled up again and long and critically
surveyed a woodland. His eye caught one lone tree in the centre of
an amphitheatrical hollow just visible over the slope of a hill.
The look of the tree interested him, for its growth was strange,
and he opened the gate and rode across the thick turf toward it.
The bark was smooth, the tree was the size of a man's body, and he
dismounted, nodding his head up and down with much satisfaction.
Standing close to the tree, he pulled out his knife, cut out a
square of the bark as high as the first button of his coat and
moving around the trunk cut out several more squares at the same
level.

"I reckon," he muttered, "that's whar his heart is yit, if _I_
ain't growed too much."

Then he led the old mare to higher ground, came back, levelled his
pistol, and moving in a circle around the tree, pulled the trigger
opposite each square, and with every shot he grunted:

"Can't hit a barn, can't I, by Heck!"

In each square a bullet went home. Then he reloaded and walked
rapidly around the tree, still firing.

"An' I reckon that's a-makin' some nail-holes fer his galluses!"

And reloading again he ran around the tree, firing.

"An' mebbe I couldn't still git him if I was hikin' fer the corner
of a house an' was in a LEETLE grain of a hurry to git out o' HIS
range."

Examining results at a close range, the boy was quite satisfied--
hardly a shot had struck without a band three inches in width
around the tree. There was one further test that he had not yet
made; but he felt sober now and he drew a bottle from his hip-
pocket and pulled at it hard and long. The old nag grazing above
him had paid no more attention to the fusillade than to the
buzzing of flies. He mounted her, and Gray, riding at a gallop to
make out what the unearthly racket going on in the hollow was, saw
the boy going at full speed in a circle about the tree, firing and
yelling, and as Gray himself in a moment more would be in range,
he shouted a warning. Jason stopped and waited with belligerent
eyes as Gray rode toward him.

"I say, Jason," Gray smiled, "I'm afraid my father wouldn't like
that--you've pretty near killed that tree."

Jason stared, amazed--

"Fust time I ever heerd of anybody not wantin' a feller to shoot
at a tree."

Gray saw that he was in earnest and he kept on, smiling.

"Well, we haven't got as many trees here as you have down in the
mountains, and up here they're more valuable."

The last words were unfortunate.

"Looks like you keer a heep fer yo' trees," sneered the mountain
boy with a wave of his pistol toward a demolished woodland; "an'
if our trees air so wuthless, whut do you furriners come down thar
and rob us of 'em fer?"

The sneer, the tone, and the bitter emphasis on the one ugly word
turned Gray's face quite red.

"You mustn't say anything like that to me," was his answer, and
the self-control in his voice but helped make the mountain boy
lose his at once and completely. He rode straight for Gray and
pulled in, waving his pistol crazily before the latter's face, and
Gray could actually hear the grinding of his teeth.

"Go git yo' gun! Git yo' gun!"

Gray turned very pale, but he showed no fear.

"I don't know what's the matter with you," he said steadily, "but
you must be drunk."

"Go git yo' gun!" was the furious answer. "Go git yo' gun!"

"Boys don't fight with guns in this country, but--"

"You're a d--d coward," yelled Jason.

Gray's fist shot through the mist of rage that suddenly blinded
him, catching Jason on the point of the chin, and as the mountain
boy spun half around in his saddle, Gray caught the pistol in both
hands and in the struggle both rolled, still clutching the weapon,
to the ground, Gray saying with quiet fury:

"Drop that pistol and I'll lick hell out of you!"

There was no answer but the twist of Jason's wrist, and the bullet
went harmlessly upward. Before he could pull the trigger again,
the sinewy fingers of a man's hand closed over the weapon and
pushed it flat with the earth, and Jason's upturned eyes looked
into the grave face of the school-master. That face was stern and
shamed Jason instantly. The two boys rose to their feet, and the
mountain boy turned away from the school-master and saw Marjorie
standing ten yards away white and terror-stricken, and her eyes
when he met them blazed at him with a light that no human eye had
ever turned on him before. The boy knew anger, rage, hate,
revenge, but contempt was new to him, and his soul was filled with
sudden shame that was no less strange, but the spirit in him was
undaunted, and like a challenged young buck his head went up as he
turned again to face his accuser.

"Were you going to shoot an unarmed boy?" asked John Burnham
gravely.

"He hit me."

"You called him a coward."

"He hit me."

"He offered to fight you fist and skull."

"He had the same chance to git the gun that I had."

"He wasn't trying to get it in order to shoot you."

Jason made no answer and the school-master repeated:

"He offered to fight you fist and skull."

"I was too mad--but I'll fight him now."

"Boys don't fight in the presence of young ladies."

Gray spoke up and in his tone was the contempt that was in
Marjorie's eyes, and it made the mountain boy writhe.

"I wouldn't soil my hands on you--now."

The school-master rebuked Gray with a gesture, but Jason was
confused and sick now and he held out his hand for his pistol.

"I better be goin' now--this ain't no place fer me."

The school-master gravely handed the weapon to him.

"I'm coming over to have a talk with you, Jason," he said.

The boy made no answer. He climbed on his horse slowly. His face
was very pale, and once only he swept the group with eyes that
were badgered but no longer angry, and as they rested on Marjorie,
there was a pitiful, lonely something in them that instantly
melted her and almost started her tears. Then he rode silently and
slowly away.




XIII

Slowly the lad rode westward, for the reason that he was not yet
quite ready to pass between those two big-pillared houses again,
and because just then whatever his way--no matter. His anger was
all gone now and his brain was clear, but he was bewildered.
Throughout the day he had done nothing that he thought was wrong,
and yet throughout the day he had done nothing that seemed to be
right. This land was not for him--he did not understand the ways
of it and the people, and they did not understand him. Even the
rock-pecker had gone back on him, and though that hurt him deeply,
the lad loyally knew that the school-master must have his own good
reasons. The memory of Marjorie's look still hurt, and somehow he
felt that even Mavis was vaguely on their side against him, and of
a sudden the pang of loneliness that Marjorie saw in his eyes so
pierced him that he pulled his old nag in and stood motionless in
the middle of the road. The sky was overcast and the air was
bitter and chill; through the gray curtain that hung to the rim of
the earth, the low sun swung like a cooling ball of fire and under
it the gray fields stretched with such desolation for him that he
dared ride no farther into them. And then as the lad looked across
the level stillness that encircled him, the mountains loomed
suddenly from it--big, still, peaceful, beckoning--and made him
faint with homesickness. Those mountains were behind him--his
mountains and his home that was his no longer--but, after all, any
home back there was his, and that thought so filled his heart with
a rush of gladness that with one long breath of exultation he
turned in his saddle to face those distant unseen hills, and the
old mare, following the movement of his body, turned too, as
though she, too, suddenly wanted to go home. The chill air
actually seemed to grow warmer as he trotted back, the fields
looked less desolate, and then across them he saw flashing toward
him the hostile fire of a scarlet tam-o'-shanter. He was nearing
the yard gate of the big house on the right, and from the other
big house on the left the spot of shaking crimson was galloping
toward the turnpike. He could wait until Marjorie crossed the road
ahead of him, or he could gallop ahead and pass before she could
reach the gate, but his sullen pride forbade either course, and so
he rode straight on, and his dogged eyes met hers as she swung the
gate to and turned her pony across the road. Marjorie flushed, her
lips half parted to speak, and Jason sullenly drew in, but as she
said nothing, he clucked and dug his heels viciously into the old
mare's sides.

Then the little girl raised one hand to check him and spoke
hurriedly:

"Jason, we've been talking about you, and my Uncle Bob says you
kept me from getting killed."

Jason stared.

"And the school-teacher says we don't understand you--you people
down in the mountains--and that we mustn't blame you for--" she
paused in helpless embarrassment, for still the mountain boy
stared.

"You know," she went on finally, "boys here don't do things that
you boys do down there--"

She stopped again, the tears started suddenly in her earnest eyes,
and a miracle happened to little Jason. Something quite new surged
within him, his own eyes swam suddenly, and he cleared his throat
huskily.

"I hain't a-goin' to bother you folks no more," he said, and he
tried to be surly, but couldn't. "I'm a-goin' away." The little
girl's tears ceased.

"I'm sorry," she said. "I wish you'd stay here and go to school.
The school-teacher said he wanted you to do that, and he says such
nice things about you, and so does my Uncle Bob, and Gray is
sorry, and he says he is coming over to see you to-morrow."

"I'm a-goin' home," repeated Jason stubbornly.

"Home?" repeated the girl, and her tone did what her look had done
a moment before, for she knew he had no home, and again the lad
was filled with a throbbing uneasiness. Her eyes dropped to her
pony's mane, and in a moment more she looked up with shy
earnestness.

"Will you do something for me?"

Again Jason started and of its own accord his tongue spoke words
that to his own ears were very strange.

"Thar hain't nothin' I won't do fer ye," he said, and his sturdy
sincerity curiously disturbed Marjorie in turn, so that her flush
came back, and she went on with slow hesitation and with her eyes
again fixed on her pony's neck.

"I want you to promise me not--not to shoot anybody--unless you
HAVE to in self-defence--and never to take another drink until--
until you see me again."

She could not have bewildered the boy more had she asked him never
to go barefoot again, but his eyes were solemn when she looked up
and solemnly he nodded assent.

"I give ye my hand."

The words were not literal, but merely the way the mountaineer
phrases the giving of a promise, but the little girl took them
literally and she rode up to him with slim fingers outstretched
and a warm friendly smile on her little red mouth. Awkwardly the
lad thrust out his dirty, strong little hand.

"Good-by, Jason," she said.

"Good-by--" he faltered, and, still smiling, she finished the
words for him.

"Marjorie," she said, and unsmilingly he repeated:

"Marjorie."

While she passed through the gate he sat still and watched her,
and he kept on watching her as she galloped toward home, twisting
in his saddle to follow her course around the winding road. He saw
a negro boy come out to the stile to take her pony, and there
Marjorie, dismounting, saw in turn the lad still motionless where
she had left him, and looking after her. She waved her whip to
him, went on toward the house, and when she reached the top of the
steps, she turned and waved to him again, but he made no answering
gesture, and only when the front door closed behind her, did the
boy waken from his trance and jog slowly up the road. Only the rim
of the red fire-ball was arched over the horizon behind him now.
Winter dusk was engulfing the fields and through it belated crows
were scurrying silently for protecting woods. For a little while
Jason rode with his hands folded man-wise on the pommel of his
saddle and with manlike emotions in his heart, for, while the
mountains still beckoned, this land had somehow grown more
friendly and there was a curious something after all that he would
leave behind. What it was he hardly knew; but a pair of blue eyes,
misty with mysterious tears, had sown memories in his confused
brain that he would not soon lose. He did not forget the contempt
that had blazed from those eyes, but he wondered now at the reason
for that contempt. Was there something that ruled this land--
something better than the code that ruled his hills? He had
remembered every word the geologist had ever said, for he loved
the man, but it had remained for a strange girl--a girl--to revive
them, to give them actual life and plant within him a sudden
resolve to learn for himself what it all meant, and to practise
it, if he found it good. A cold wind sprang up now and cutting
through his thin clothes drove him in a lope toward his mother's
home.

Apparently Mavis was watching for him through the window of the
cottage, for she ran out on the porch to meet him, but something
in the boy's manner checked her, and she neither spoke nor asked a
question while the boy took off his saddle and tossed it on the
steps. Nor did Jason give her but one glance, for the eagerness of
her face and the trust and tenderness in her eyes were an
unconscious reproach and made him feel guilty and faithless, so
that he changed his mind about turning the old mare out in the
yard and led her to the stable, merely to get away from the little
girl.

Mavis was in the kitchen when he entered the house, and while they
all were eating supper, the lad could feel his little cousin's
eyes on him all the time--watching and wondering and troubled and
hurt. And when the four were seated about the fire, he did not
look at her when he announced that he was going back home, but he
saw her body start and shrink. His step-father yawned and said
nothing, and his mother looked on into the fire.

"When you goin', Jasie?" she asked at last.

"Daylight," he answered shortly.

There was a long silence.

"Whut you goin' to do down thar?"

The lad lifted his head fiercely and looked from the woman to the
man and back again.

"I'm a-goin' to git that land back," he snapped; and as there was
no question, no comment, he settled back brooding in his chair.

"Hit wasn't right--hit COULDN'T 'a' been right," he muttered, and
then as though he were answering his mother's unspoken question:

"I don't know HOW I'm goin' to git it back, but if it wasn't
right, thar must be some way, an' I'm a-goin' to find out if hit
takes me all my life."

His mother was still silent, though she had lifted a comer of her
apron to her eyes, and the lad rose and without a word of good-
night climbed the stairs to go to bed. Then the mother spoke to
her husband angrily.

"You oughtn't to let the boy put all the blame on me, Steve--you
made me sell that land."

Steve's answer was another yawn, and he rose to get ready for bed,
and Mavis, too, turned indignant eyes on him, for she had heard
enough from the two to know that her step-mother spoke the truth.
Her father opened the door and she heard the creak of his heavy
footsteps across the freezing porch. Her step-mother went into the
kitchen and Mavis climbed the stairs softly and opened Jason's
door.

"Jasie!" she called.

"Whut you want?"

"Jasie, take me back home with ye, won't you?"

A rough denial was on his lips, but her voice broke into a little
sob and the boy lay for a moment without answering.

"Whut on earth would you do down thar, Mavis?"

And then he remembered how he had told her that he would come for
her some day, and he remembered the Hawn boast that a Hawn's word
was as good as his bond and he added kindly: "Wait till mornin',
Mavis. I'll take ye if ye want to go."

The door closed instantly and she was gone. When the lad came down
before day next morning Mavis had finished tying a few things in a
bundle and was pushing it out of sight under a bed, and Jason knew
what that meant.

"You hain't told 'em?"

Mavis shook her head.

"Mebbe yo' pap won't let ye."

"He ain't hyeh," said the little girl.

"Whar is he?"

"I don't know."

"Mavis," said the boy seriously, "I'm a boy an' hit don't make no
difference whar I go, but you're a gal an' hit looks like you
ought to stay with yo' daddy."

The girl shook her head stubbornly, but he paid no attention.

"I tell ye, I'm a-goin' back to that new-fangled school when I git
to grandpap's, an' whut'll you do?"

"I'll go with ye."

"I've thought o' that," said the boy patiently, "but they mought
not have room fer neither one of us--an' I can take keer o' myself
anywhar."

"Yes," said the little girl proudly, "an' I'll trust ye to take
keer o' me--anywhar."

The boy looked at her long and hard, but there was no feminine
cunning in her eyes--nothing but simple trust--and his silence was
a despairing assent. From the kitchen his mother called them to
breakfast.

"Whar's Steve?" asked the boy.

The mother gave the same answer as had Mavis, but she looked
anxious and worried.

"Mavis is a-goin' back to the mountains with me," said the boy,
and the girl looked up in defiant expectation, but the mother did
not even look around from the stove.

"Mebbe yo' pap won't let ye," she said quietly.

"How's he goin' to help hisself," asked the girl, "when he ain't
hyeh?"

"He'll blame me fer it, but I ain't a-blamin' you."

The words surprised and puzzled both and touched both with
sympathy and a little shame. The mother looked at her son, opened
her lips again, but closed them with a glance at Mavis that made
her go out and leave them alone.

"Jasie," she said then, "I reckon when Babe was a-playin' 'possum
in the bushes that day, he could 'a' shot ye when you run down the
hill."

She took his silence for assent and went on:

"That shows he don't hold no grudge agin you fer shootin' at him."

Still Jason was silent, and a line of stern justice straightened
the woman's lips.

"I hain't got no right to say a word, just because Babe air my own
brother. Mebbe Babe knows who the man was, but I don't believe
Babe done it. Hit hain't enough that he was jes' SEED a-comin'
outen the bushes, an' afore you go a-layin' fer Babe, all I axe ye
is to make PLUMB DEAD SHORE."

It was a strange new note to come from his mother's voice, and it
kept the boy still silent from helplessness and shame. She had
spoken calmly, but now there was a little break in her voice.

"I want ye to go back, an' I'd go blind fer the rest o' my days if
that land was yours an' was a-waitin' down thar fer ye."

From the next room came the sound of Mavis's restless feet, and
the boy rose.

"I hain't a-goin' to lay fer Babe, mammy," he said huskily; "I
hain't a-goin' to lay fer nobody--now. An' don't you worry no more
about that land."

Half an hour later, just when day was breaking, Mavis sat behind
Jason with her bundle in her lap, and the mother looked up at
them.

"I wish I was a-goin' with ye," she said.

And when they had passed out of sight down the lane, she turned
back into the house--weeping.




XIV

Little Mavis did not reach the hills. At sunrise a few miles down
the road, the two met Steve Hawn on a borrowed horse, his pistol
buckled around him and his face pale and sleepless.

"Whar you two goin'?" he asked roughly.

"Home," was Jason's short answer, and he felt Mavis's arm about
his waist begin to tremble.

"Git off, Mavis, an' git up hyeh behind me. Yo' home's with me."

Jason valiantly reached for his gun, but Mavis caught his hand
and, holding it, slipped to the ground. "Don't, Jasie--I'll come,
pap, I'll come." Whereat Steve laughed and Jason, raging, saw her
ride away behind her step-father, clutching him about the waist
with one arm and with the other bent over her eyes to shield her
tears.

A few miles farther, Jason came on the smoking, charred remains of
a toll-gate, and he paused a moment wondering if Steve might not
have had a hand in that, and rode on toward the hills. Two hours
later the school-master's horse shied from those black ruins, and
John Burnham kept on toward school with a troubled face. To him
the ruins meant the first touch of the writhing tentacles of the
modern trust and the Blue-grass Kentuckian's characteristic way of
throwing them off, for turnpikes of white limestone, like the one
he travelled, thread the Blue-grass country like strands of a
spider's web. The spinning of them started away back in the
beginning of the last century. That far back, the strand he
followed pierced the heart of the region from its chief town to
the Ohio and was graded for steam-wagons that were expected to
roll out from the land of dreams. Every few miles on each of these
roads sat a little house, its porch touching the very edge of the
turnpike, and there a long pole, heavily weighted at one end and
pulled down and tied fast to the porch, blocked the way. Every
traveller, except he was on foot, every drover of cattle, sheep,
hogs, or mules, must pay his toll before the pole was lifted and
he could go on his way. And Burnham could remember the big fat man
who once a month, in a broad, low buggy, drawn by two swift black
horses, would travel hither and thither, stopping at each little
house to gather in the deposits of small coins. As time went on,
this man and a few friends began to gather in as well certain bits
of scattered paper that put the turnpike webs like reins into a
few pairs of hands, with the natural, inevitable result: fewer men
had personal need of good roads, the man who parted with his bit
of paper lost his power of protest, and while the traveller paid
the small toll, the path that he travelled got steadily worse. A
mild effort to arouse a sentiment for county control was made, and
this failing, the Kentuckian had straightway gone for firebrand
and gun. The dormant spirit of Ku-Klux awakened, the night-rider
was born again, and one by one the toll-gates were going up in
flame and settling back in ashes to the mother earth. The school-
master smiled when he thought of the result of one investigation
in the county by law. A sturdy farmer was haled before the grand
jury.

"Do you know the perpetrators of the unlawful burning of the toll-
gate on the Cave Hill Pike?" asked the august body. The farmer ran
his fearless eyes down the twelve of his peers and slowly walked
the length of them, pointing his finger at this juror and that.

"Yes, I do," he said quietly, "and so do you--and you and YOU.
Your son was in it--and yours--and mine; and you were in it
yourself. Now, what are you going to do about it?" And, unrebuked
and unrestrained, he turned and walked out of the room, leaving
the august body, startled, grimly smiling and reduced to a
helpless pulp of inactivity.

That morning Mavis was late to school, and the school-master and
Gray and Marjorie all saw that she had been weeping. Only Marjorie
suspected the cause, but at little recess John Burnham went to her
to ask where Jason was, and Gray was behind him with the same
question on his lips. And when Mavis burst into tears, Marjorie
answered for her and sat down beside her and put her arms around
the mountain girl. After school she even took Mavis home behind
her, and Gray rode along with them on his pony. Steve Hawn was
sitting on his little porch smoking when they rode up, and he came
down and hospitably asked them to "light and hitch their beastes,"
and the black-haired step-mother called from the doorway for them
to "come in an' rest a spell." Gray and Marjorie concealed with
some difficulty their amusement at such queer phrases of welcome,
and a wonder at the democratic ease of the two and their utter
unconsciousness of any social difference between the lords and
ladies of the Blue-grass and poor people from the mountains, for
the other tobacco tenants were not like these. And there was no
surprise on the part of the man, the woman, or the little girl
when a sudden warm impulse to relieve loneliness led Marjorie to
ask Mavis to go to her own home and stay all night with her.

"Course," said the woman.

"Go right along, Mavis," said the man, and Marjorie turned to
Gray.

"You can carry her things," she said, and she turned to Mavis and
met puzzled, unabashed eyes.

"Whut things?" asked little Mavis, whereat Marjorie blushed,
looked quickly to Gray, whose face was courteously unsmiling, and
started her pony abruptly.

It was a wonderful night for the mountaineer girl in the big-
pillared house on the hill. When they got home, Marjorie drove her
in a little pony-cart over the big farm, while Gray trotted
alongside--through pastures filled with cattle so fat they could
hardly walk, past big barns bursting with hay and tobacco and
stables full of slender, beautiful horses. Even the pigs had
little red houses of refuge from the weather and flocks of sheep
dotted the hill-side like unmelted patches of snow. The mountain
girl's eyes grew big with wonder when she entered the great hall
with its lofty ceiling, its winding stairway, and its polished
floor, so slippery that she came near falling down, and they
stayed big when she saw the rows of books, the pictures on the
walls, the padded couches and chairs, the noiseless carpets, the
polished andirons that gleamed like gold before the blazing fires,
and when she glimpsed through an open door the long dining-table
with its glistening glass and silver. When she mounted that
winding stairway and entered Marjorie's room she was stricken dumb
by its pink curtains, pink wall-paper, and gleaming brass bedstead
with pink coverlid and pink pillow-facings. And she nearly gasped
when Marjorie led her on into another room of blue.

"This is your room," she said smiling, "right next to mine. I'll
be back in a minute."

Mavis stood a moment in the middle of the room when she was alone,
hardly daring to sit down. A coal fire crackled behind a wire
screen--coal from her mountains. A door opened into a queer little
room, glistening white, and she peeped, wondering, within.

"There's the bath-room," Marjorie had said. She had not known what
was meant, and she did not now, looking at the long white tub and
the white tiling floor and walls until she saw the multitudinous
towels, and she marvelled at the new mystery. She went back and
walked to the window and looked out on the endless rolling winter
fields over which she had driven that afternoon--all, Gray had
told her, to be Marjorie's some day, just as all across the
turnpike, Marjorie had told her, was some day to be Gray's. She
thought of herself and of Jason, and her tears started, not for
herself, but for him. Then she heard Marjorie coming in and she
brushed her eyes swiftly.

"Whar can I git some water to wash?" she asked.

Marjorie laughed delightedly and led her back to that wonderful
little white room, turned a gleaming silver star, and the water
spurted joyously into the bowl.

"Well, I do declare!"

Soon they went down to supper, and Mavis put out a shy hand to
Marjorie's mother, a kind-eyed, smiling woman in black. And Gray,
too, was there, watching the little mountain girl and smiling
encouragement whenever he met her eyes. And Mavis passed muster
well, for the mountaineer's sensitiveness makes him wary of his
manners when he is among strange people, and he will go hungry
rather than be guilty unknowingly of a possible breach. Marjorie's
mother was much interested and pleased with Mavis, and she made up
her mind at once to discuss with her daughter how they could best
help along the little stranger. After supper Marjorie played on
the piano, and she and Gray sang duets, but the music was foreign
to Mavis, and she did not like it very much. When the two went
upstairs, there was a dainty long garment spread on Mavis's bed,
which Mavis fingered carefully with much interest and much
curiosity until she recalled suddenly what Marjorie had said about
Gray carrying her "things." This was one of these things, and
Mavis put it on wondering what the other things might be. Then she
saw that a silver-backed comb and brush had appeared on the bureau
along with a tiny pair of scissors and a little ivory stick, the
use of which she could not make out at all. But she asked no
questions, and when Marjorie came in with a new toothbrush and a
little tin box and put them in the bath-room, Mavis still showed
no surprise, but ran her eyes down the nightgown with its dainty
ribbons.

"Ain't it purty?" she said, and her voice and her eyes spoke all
her thanks with such sincerity and pathos that Marjorie was
touched. Then they sat down in front of the fire--a pair of slim
brown feet that had been bruised by many a stone and pierced by
many a thorn stretched out to a warm blaze side by side with a
pair of white slim ones that had been tenderly guarded against
both since the first day they had touched the earth, and a golden
head that had never been without the caress of a tender hand and a
tousled dark one that had been bared to sun and wind and storm--
close together for a long time. Unconsciously Marjorie had Mavis
tell her much about Jason, just as Mavis without knowing it had
Marjorie tell her much about Gray. Mavis got the first good-night
kiss of her life that night, and she went to bed thinking of the
Blue-grass boy's watchful eyes, little courtesies, and his
sympathetic smile, just as Gray, riding home, was thinking of the
dark, shy little mountain girl with a warm glow of protection
about his heart, and Marjorie fell asleep dreaming of the mountain
boy who, under her promise, had gone back homeless to his hills.
In them perhaps it was the call of the woods and wilds that had
led their pioneer forefathers long, long ago into woods and wilds,
or perhaps, after all, it was only the little blind god shooting
arrows at them in the dark.

At least with little Jason one arrow had gone home. At the forks
of the road beyond the county-seat he turned not toward his
grandfather's, but up the spur and over the mountain. And St.
Hilda, sitting on her porch, saw him coming again. His face looked
beaten but determined, and he strode toward her as straight and
sturdy as ever.

"I've come back to stay with ye," he said.

Again she started to make denial, but he shook his head. "'Tain't
no use--I'm a-goin' to stay this time," he said, and he walked up
the steps, pulling two or three dirty bills from his pocket with
one hand and unbuckling his pistol belt with the other.

"Me an' my nag'll work fer ye an' I'll wear gal's stockin's an' a
poke-bonnet an' do a gal's work, if you'll jus' l'arn me whut I
want to know."




XV

The funeral of old Hiram Sudduth, Marjorie's grandfather on her
mother's side, was over. The old man had been laid to rest, by the
side of his father and his pioneer grandfather, in the cedar-
filled burying-ground on the broad farm that had belonged in turn
to the three in an adjoining county that was the last stronghold
of conservatism in the Blue-grass world, and John Burnham, the
school-master, who had spent the night with an old friend after
the funeral, was driving home. Not that there had not been many
changes in that stronghold, too, but they were fewer than
elsewhere and unmodern, and whatever profit was possible through
these changes was reaped by men of the land like old Hiram and not
by strangers. For the war there, as elsewhere, had done its deadly
work. With the negro quarters empty, the elders were too old to
change their ways, the young would not accept the new and hard
conditions, and as mortgages slowly ate up farm after farm, quiet,
thrifty, hard-working old Hiram would gradually take them in,
depleting the old Stonewall neighborhood of its families one by
one, and sending them West, never to come back. The old man, John
Burnham knew, had bitterly opposed the marriage of his daughter
with a "spendthrift Pendleton," and he wondered if now the old
man's will would show that he had carried that opposition to the
grave. It was more than likely, for Marjorie's father had gone his
careless, generous, magnificent way in spite of the curb that the
inherited thrift and inherited passion for land in his Sudduth
wife had put upon him. Old Hiram knew, moreover, the parental
purpose where Gray and Marjorie were concerned, and it was not
likely that he would thwart one generation and tempt the
succeeding one to go on in its reckless way. Right now Burnham
knew that trouble was imminent for Gray's father, and he began to
wonder what for him and his kind the end would be, for no change
that came or was coming to his beloved land ever escaped his
watchful eye. From the crest of the Cumberland to the yellow flood
of the Ohio he knew that land, and he loved every acre of it,
whether blue-grass, bear-grass, peavine, or pennyroyal, and he
knew its history from Daniel Boone to the little Boones who still
trapped skunk, mink, and muskrat, and shot squirrels in the hills
with the same old-fashioned rifle, and he loved its people--his
people--whether they wore silk and slippers, homespun and brogans,
patent leathers and broadcloth, or cowhide boots and jeans. And
now serious troubles were threatening them. A new man with a new
political method had entered the arena and had boldly offered an
election bill which, if passed and enforced, would create a State-
wide revolution, for it would rob the people of local self-
government and centralize power in the hands of a triumvirate that
would be the creature of his government and, under the control of
no court or jury, the supreme master of the State and absolute
master of the people. And Burnham knew that, in such a crisis,
ties of blood, kinship, friendship, religion, business, would
count no more in the Blue-grass than they did during the Civil
War, and that now, as then, father and son, brother and brother,
neighbor and neighbor, would each think and act for himself,
though the house divided against itself should fall to rise no
more. Nor was that all. In the farmer's fight against the
staggering crop of mortgages that had slowly sprung up from the
long-ago sowing of the dragon's teeth Burnham saw with a heavy
heart the telling signs of the land's slow descent from the
strength of hemp to the weakness of tobacco--the ravage of the
woodlands, the incoming of the tenant from the river-valley
counties, the scars on the beautiful face of the land, the scars
on the body social of the region--and now he knew another deadlier
crisis, both social and economic, must some day come.

In the toll-gate war, long over, the law had been merely a little
too awkward and slow. County sentiment had been a little lazy, but
it had got active in a hurry, and several gentlemen, among them
Gray's father, had ridden into town and deposited bits of gilt-
scrolled paper to be appraised and taken over by the county, and
the whole problem had been quickly solved, but the school-master,
looking back, could not help wondering what lawless seeds the
firebrand had then sowed in the hearts of the people and what
weeds might not spring from those seeds even now; for the trust
element of the toll-gate troubles had been accidental,
unintentional, even unconscious, unrecognized; and now the real
spirit of a real trust from the outside world was making itself
felt. Courteous emissaries were smilingly fixing their own price
on the Kentuckian's own tobacco and assuring him that he not only
could not get a higher price elsewhere, but that if he declined he
would be offered less next time, which he would have to accept or
he could not sell at all. And the incredulous, fiery, independent
Kentuckian found his crop mysteriously shadowed on its way to the
big town markets, marked with an invisible "noli me tangere"
except at the price that he was offered at home. And so he had to
sell it in a rage at just that price, and he went home puzzled and
fighting-mad. If, then, the Blue-grass people had handled with the
firebrand corporate aggrandizement of toll-gate owners who were
neighbors and friends, how would they treat meddlesome
interference from strangers? Already one courteous emissary in one
county had fled the people's wrath on a swift thoroughbred, and
Burnham smiled sadly to himself and shook his head.

Rounding a hill a few minutes later, the school-master saw far
ahead the ancestral home of the Pendletons, where the stern old
head of the house, but lately passed in his ninetieth year, had
wielded patriarchal power. The old general had entered the Mexican
War a lieutenant and come out a colonel, and from the Civil War he
had emerged a major-general. He had two sons--twins--and for the
twin brothers he had built twin houses on either side of the
turnpike and had given each five hundred acres of land. And these
houses had literally grown from the soil, for the soil had given
every stick of timber in them and every brick and stone. The twin
brothers had married sisters, and thus as the results of those
unions Gray's father and Marjorie's father were double cousins,
and like twin brothers had been reared, and the school-master
marvelled afresh when he thought of the cleavage made in that one
family by the terrible Civil War. For the old general carried but
one of his twin sons into the Confederacy with him--the other went
with the Union--and his grandsons, the double cousins, who were
just entering college, went not only against each other, but each
against his own father, and there was the extraordinary fact of
three generations serving in the same war, cousin against cousin,
brother against brother, and father against son. The twin brothers
each gave up his life for his cause. After the war the cousins
lived on like brothers, married late, and, naturally, each was
called uncle by the other's only child. In time the two took their
fathers' places in the heart of the old general, and in the twin
houses on the hills. Gray's father had married an aristocrat, who
survived the birth of Gray only a few years, and Marjorie's father
died of an old wound but a year or two after she was born. And so
the balked affection of the old man dropped down through three
generations to centre on Marjorie, and his passionate family pride
to concentrate on Gray.

Now the old Roman was gone, and John Burnham looked with sad eyes
at the last stronghold of him and his kind--the rambling old house
stuccoed with aged brown and covered with ancient vines, knotted
and gnarled like an old man's hand; the walls three feet thick and
built as for a fort, as was doubtless the intent in pioneer days;
the big yard of unmown blue-grass and filled with cedars and
forest trees; the numerous servants' quarters, the spacious hen-
house, the stables with gables and long sloping roofs and the
arched gateway to them for the thoroughbreds, under which no
hybrid mule or lowly work-horse was ever allowed to pass; the
spring-house with its dripping green walls, the long-silent
blacksmith-shop; the still windmill; and over all the atmosphere
of careless, magnificent luxury and slow decay; the stucco peeled
off in great patches, the stable roofs sagging, the windmill
wheelless, the fences following the line of a drunken man's walk,
the trees storm-torn, and the mournful cedars harping with every
passing wind a requiem for the glory that was gone. As he looked,
the memory of the old man's funeral came to Burnham: the white old
face in the coffin--haughty, noble, proud, and the spirit of it
unconquered even by death; the long procession of carriages, the
slow way to the cemetery, the stops on that way, the creaking of
wheels and harness, and the awe of it all to the boy, Gray, who
rode with him. Then the hospitable doors of the princely old house
were closed and the princely life that had made merry for so long
within its walls came sharply to an end, and it stood now,
desolate, gloomy, haunted, the last link between the life that was
gone and the life that was now breaking just ahead. A mile on, the
twin-pillared houses of brick jutted from a long swelling knoll on
each side of the road. In each the same spirit had lived and was
yet alive.

In Gray's home it had gone on unchecked toward the same tragedy,
but in Marjorie's the thrifty, quiet force of her mother's hand
had been in power, and in the little girl the same force was
plain. Her father was a Pendleton of the Pendletons, too, but the
same gentle force had, without curb or check-rein, so guided him
that while he lived he led proudly with never a suspicion that he
was being led. And since the death of Gray's mother and Marjorie's
father each that was left had been faithful to the partner gone,
and in spite of prediction and gossip, the common neighborhood
prophecy had remained unfulfilled.

A mile farther onward, the face of the land on each side changed
suddenly and sharply and became park-like. Not a ploughed acre was
visible, no tree-top was shattered, no broken boughs hung down.
The worm fence disappeared and neat white lines flashed divisions
of pastures, it seemed, for miles. A great amphitheatrical red
barn sat on every little hill or a great red rectangular tobacco
barn. A huge dairy was building of brick. Paddocks and stables
were everywhere, macadamized roads ran from the main highway
through the fields, and on the highest hill visible stood a great
villa--a colossal architectural stranger in the land--and Burnham
was driving by a row of neat red cottages, strangers, too, in the
land. In the old Stonewall neighborhood that Burnham had left the
gradual depopulation around old Hiram left him almost as alone as
his pioneer grandfather had been, and the home of the small
farmers about him had been filled by the tobacco tenant. From the
big villa emanated a similar force with a similar tendency, but
old Hiram, compared with old Morton Sanders, was as a slow fire to
a lightning-bolt. Sanders was from the East, had unlimited wealth,
and loved race-horses. Purchasing a farm for them, the Saxon virus
in his Kentucky blood for land had gotten hold of him, and he,
too, had started depopulating the country; only where old Hiram
bought roods, he bought acres; and where Hiram bagged the small
farmer for game, Sanders gunned for the aristocrat as well. It was
for Sanders that Colonel Pendleton had gone to the mountains long
ago to gobble coal lands. It was to him that the roof over little
Jason's head and the earth under his feet had been sold, and the
school-master smiled a little bitterly when he turned at last into
a gate and drove toward a stately old home in the midst of ancient
cedars, for he was thinking of the little mountaineer and of the
letter St. Hilda had sent him years ago.

"Jason has come back," she wrote, "to learn some way o' gittin'
his land back.'"

For the school-master's reflections during his long drive had not
been wholly impersonal. With his own family there had been the
same change, the same passing, the workings of the same force in
the same remorseless way, and to him, too, the same doom had come.
The home to which he was driving had been his, but it was Morton
Sanders's now. His brother lived there as manager of Sanders's
flocks, herds, and acres, and in the house of his fathers the
school-master now paid his own brother for his board.




XVI

The boy was curled up on the rear seat of the smoking-car. His
face was upturned to the glare of light above him, the train
bumped, jerked, and swayed; smoke and dust rolled in at the open
window and cinders stung his face, but he slept as peacefully as
though he were in one of the huge feather-beds at his
grandfather's house--slept until the conductor shook him by the
shoulder, when he opened his eyes, grunted, and closed them again.
The train stopped, a brakeman yanked him roughly to his feet, put
a cheap suit-case into his hand, and pushed him, still dazed, into
the chill morning air. The train rumbled on and left him blinking
into a lantern held up to his face, but he did not look promising
as a hotel guest and the darky porter turned abruptly; and the boy
yawned long and deeply, with his arms stretched above his head,
dropped on the frosty bars of a baggage-truck and rose again
shivering. Cocks were crowing, light was showing in the east, the
sea of mist that he well knew was about him, but no mountains
loomed above it, and St. Hilda's prize pupil, Jason Hawn, woke
sharply at last with a tingling that went from head to foot. Once
more he was in the land of the Blue-grass, his journey was almost
over, and in a few hours he would put his confident feet on a new
level and march on upward. Gradually, as the lad paced the
platform, the mist thinned and the outlines of things came out. A
mysterious dark bulk high in the air showed as a water-tank, roofs
new to mountain eyes jutted upward, trees softly emerged, a
desolate dusty street opened before him, and the cocks crowed on
lustily all around him and from farm-houses far away. The crowing
made him hungry, and he went to the light of a little eating-house
and asked the price of the things he saw on the counter there, but
the price was too high. He shook his head and went out, but his
pangs were so keen that he went back for a cup of coffee and a
hard-boiled egg, and then he heard the coming thunder of his
train. The sun was rising as he sped on through the breaking mist
toward the Blue-grass town that in pioneer days was known as the
Athens of the West. In a few minutes the train slackened in mid-
air and on a cloud of mist between jutting cliffs, it seemed, and
the startled lad, looking far down through it, saw a winding
yellow light, and he was rushing through autumn fields again
before he realized that the yellow light was the Kentucky River
surging down from the hills. Back up the stream surged his
memories, making him faint with homesickness, for it was the last
link that bound him to the mountains. But both home and hills were
behind him now, and he shook himself sharply and lost him-self
again in the fields of grass and grain, the grazing stock and the
fences, houses, and barns that reeled past his window. Steve Hawn
met him at the station with a rattle-trap buggy and, stared at him
long and hard.

"I'd hardly knowed ye--you've growed like a weed."

"How's the folks?" asked Jason.

"Stirrin'."

Silently they rattled down the street, each side of which was
lined with big wagons loaded with tobacco and covered with cotton
cloth--there seemed to be hundreds of them.

"Hell's a-comin' about that terbaccer up here," said Steve.

"Hell's a-comin' in the mountains if that robber up here at the
capital steals the next election for governor," said Jason, and
Steve looked up quickly and with some uneasiness. He himself had
heard vaguely that somebody, somewhere, and in some way, had
robbed his own party of their rights and would go on robbing at
the polls, but this new Jason seemed to know all about it, so
Steve nodded wisely.

"Yes, my feller."

Through town they drove, and when they started out into the
country they met more wagons of tobacco coming in.

"How's the folks in the mountains?"

"About the same as usual," said the boy, "Grandpap's poorly. The
war's over just now--folks 'r' busy makin' money. Uncle Arch's
still takin' up options. The railroad's comin' up the river"--the
lad's face darkened--"an' land's sellin' fer three times as much
as you sold me out fer."

Steve's face darkened too, but he was silent.

"Found out yit who killed yo' daddy?"

Jason's answer was short.

"If I had I wouldn't tell you."

"Must be purty good shot now?"

"I hain't shot a pistol off fer four year," said the lad again
shortly, and Steve stared.

"Whut devilmint are you in up here now?" asked Jason calmly and
with no apparent notice of the start Steve gave.

"Who's been a-tellin' you lies about me?" asked Steve with angry
suspicion.

"I hain't heerd a word," said Jason  coolly. "I bet you burned
that toll-gate the morning I left here. Thar's devilmint goin' on
everywhar, an' if there's any around you I know you can't keep out
o' it."

Steve laughed with relief.

"You can't git away with devilmint here like you can in the
mountains, an' I'm 'tendin' to my own business."

Jason made no comment and Steve went on:

"I've paid fer this hoss an' buggy an' I got things hung up at
home an' a leetle money in the bank, an' yo' ma says she wouldn't
go back to the mountains fer nothin'."

"How's Mavis?" asked Jason abruptly.

"Reckon you wouldn't know her. She's al'ays runnin' aroun' with
that Pendleton boy an' gal, an' she's chuck-full o' new-fangled
notions. She's the purtiest gal I ever seed, an'," he added slyly,
"looks like that Pendleton boy's plumb crazy 'bout her."

Jason made no answer and showed no sign of interest, much less
jealousy, and yet, though he was thinking of the Pendleton girl
and wanted to ask some question about her, a little inconsistent
rankling started deep within him at the news of Mavis's disloyalty
to him. They were approaching the lane that led to Steve's house
now, and beyond the big twin houses were visible.

"Yo' Uncle Arch's been here a good deal, an' he's tuk a powerful
fancy to Mavis an' he's goin' to send her to the same college
school in town whar you're goin'. Marjorie and Gray is a-goin'
thar too, I reckon."

Jason's heart beat fast at these words. Gray had the start of him,
but he would give the Blue-grass boy a race now in school and
without. As they turned into the lane, he could see the woods--
could almost see the tree around which he had circled drunk,
raging, and shooting his pistol, and his face burned with the
memory. And over in the hollow he had met Marjorie on her pony,
and he could see the tears in her eyes, hear her voice, and feel
the clasp of her hand again. Though neither knew it, a new life
had started for him there and then. He had kept his promise, and
he wondered if she would remember and be glad.

His mother was on the porch, waiting and watching for him, with
one hand shading her eyes. She rushed for the gate, and when he
stepped slowly from the buggy she gave a look of wondering
surprise and pride, burst into tears, and for the first time in
her life threw her arms around him and kissed him, to his great
confusion and shame. In the doorway stood a tall, slender girl
with a mass of black hair, and she, too, with shining eyes rushed
toward him, stopping defiantly short within a few feet of him when
she met his cool, clear gaze, and, without even speaking his name,
held out her hand. Then with intuitive suspicion she flashed a
look at Steve and knew that his tongue had been wagging. She
flushed angrily, but with feminine swiftness caught her lost poise
and, lifting her head, smiled.

"I wouldn't 'a' known ye," she said.

"An' I wouldn't 'a' known you," said Jason.

The girl said no more, and the father looked at his daughter and
the mother at her son, puzzled by the domestic tragedy so common
in this land of ours, where the gates of opportunity swing wide
for the passing on of the young. But of the two, Steve Hawn was
the more puzzled and uneasy, for Jason, like himself, was a
product of the hills and had had less chance than even he to know
the outside world.

The older mountaineer wore store clothes, but so did Jason. He had
gone to meet the boy, self-assured and with the purpose of
patronage and counsel, and he had met more assurance than his own
and a calm air of superiority that was troubling to Steve's pride.
The mother, always apologetic on account of the one great act of
injustice she had done her son, felt awe as she looked, and as her
pride grew she became abject, and the boy accepted the attitude of
each as his just due. But on Mavis the wave of his influence broke
as on a rock. She was as much changed from the Mavis he had last
seen as she was at that time from the little Mavis of the hills,
and he felt her eyes searching him from head to foot just as she
had done that long-ago time when he saw her first in the hunting-
field. He knew that now she was comparing him with even higher
standards than she was then, and that now, as then, he was falling
short, and he looked up suddenly and caught her eyes with a grim,
confident little smile that made her shift her gaze confusedly.
She moved nervously in her chair and her cheeks began to burn. And
Steve talked on--volubly for him--while the mother threw in a
timid homesick question to Jason now and then about something in
the mountains, and Mavis kept still and looked at the boy no more.
By and by the two women went to their work, and Jason followed
Steve about the little place to look at the cow and a few pigs and
at the garden and up over the hill to the tobacco-patch that Steve
was tending on shares with Colonel Pendleton. After dinner Mavis
disappeared, and the stepmother reckoned she had gone over to see
Marjorie Pendleton--"she was al'ays a-goin' over thar"--and in the
middle of the afternoon the boy wandered aimlessly forth into the
Blue-grass fields.

Spring green the fields were, and the woods, but scarcely touched
by the blight of autumn, were gray as usual from the limestone
turnpike, which, when he crossed it, was ankle-deep in dust. A
cloud of yellow butterflies fluttered crazily before him in a
sunlight that was hardly less golden, and when he climbed the
fence a rabbit leaped beneath him and darted into a patch of
ironweeds. Instinctively he leaped after it, crashing, through the
purple crowns, and as suddenly stopped at the foolishness of
pursuit, when he had left his pistol in his suit-case, and with
another sharp memory of the rabbit hunt he had encountered when he
made his first appearance in that land. Half unconsciously then
his thoughts turned him through the woods and through a pasture
toward the twin homes of the Pendletons, and on the top of the
next hill he could see them on their wooded eminences--could even
see the stile where he had had his last vision of Marjorie, and he
dropped in the thick grass, looking long and hard and wondering.

Around the corner of the yard fence a negro appeared leading a
prancing iron-gray horse, the front doors opened, a tall girl in a
black riding-habit came swiftly down the walk, and a moment later
the iron-gray was bearing her at a swift gallop toward the
turnpike gate. As she disappeared over a green summit, his heart
stood quite still. Could that tall woman be the little girl who,
with a tear, a tremor of the voice, and a touch of the hand, had
swerved him from the beaten path of a century? Mavis had grown, he
himself had grown--and, of course, Marjorie, too, had grown. He
began to wonder whether she would recollect him, would know him
when he met her face to face, would remember the promise she had
asked and he had given, and if she would be pleased to know that
he had kept it. In the passing years the boy had actually lost
sight of her as flesh and blood, for she had become enshrined
among his dreams by night and his dreams by day; among the visions
his soul had seen when he had sat under the old circuit rider and
heard pictured the glories of the blessed when mortals should
mingle with the shining hosts on high: and above even St. Hilda,
on the very pinnacle of his new-born and ever-growing ambitions,
Marjorie sat enthroned and alone. Light was all he remembered of
her--the light of her eyes and of her hair--yes, and that one
touch of her hand. His heart turned to water at the thought of
seeing her again and his legs were trembling when he rose to start
back through the fields. Another rabbit sprang from its bed in a
tuft of grass, but he scarcely paid any heed to it. When he
crossed the creek a muskrat was leisurely swimming for its hole in
the other bank, and he did not even pick up a stone to throw at
it, but walked on dreaming through the woods. As he was about to
emerge from them he heard voices ahead of him, high-pitched and
angry, and with the caution of his race he slipped forward and
stopped, listening. In a tobacco-patch on the edge of the woods
Steve Hawn had stopped work and was leaning on the fence. Seated
on it was one of the small farmers of the neighborhood. They were
not quarrelling, and the boy could hardly believe his ears.

"I tell you that fellow--they're callin' him the autocrat already-
-that fellow will have two of his judges to your one at every
election booth in the State. He'll steal every precinct and he'll
be settin' in the governor's chair as sure as you are standing
here. I'm a Democrat, but I've been half a Republican ever since
this free-silver foolishness came up, and I'm going to vote
against him. Now, all you mountain people are Republicans, but you
might as well all be Democrats. You haven't got a chance oh earth.
What are you goin' to do about it?"

Steve Hawn shook his head helplessly, but Jason saw his huge hand
grip his tobacco knife and his own blood beat indignantly at his
temples. The farmer threw one leg back over the fence.

"There'll be hell to pay when the day comes," he said, and he
strode away, while the mountaineer leaned motionless on the fence
with his grip on the knife unrelaxed.

Noiselessly the boy made his way through the edge of the woods,
out under the brow of a hill, and went on his restless way up the
bank of the creek toward Steve's home. When he turned toward the
turnpike he found that he had passed the house a quarter of a
mile, so he wheeled back down the creek, and where the mouth of
the lane opened from the road he dropped in a spot of sunlight on
the crest of a little cliff, his legs weary but his brain still
tirelessly at work. These people of the Blue-grass were not only
robbing him and his people of their lands, but of their political
birthright as well. The fact that the farmer was on his side but
helped make the boy know it was truth, and the resentments that
were always burning like a bed of coals deep within him sprang
into flames again. The shadows lengthened swiftly about him and
closed over him, and then the air grew chill. Abruptly he rose and
stood rigid, for far up the lane, and coming over a little hill,
he saw the figure of a man leading a black horse and by his side
the figure of a woman--both visible for a moment before they
disappeared behind the bushes that lined the lane. When they were
visible again Jason saw that they were a boy and girl, and when
they once more came into view at a bend of the lane and stopped he
saw that the girl, with her face downcast, was Mavis. While they
stood the boy suddenly put his arm around her, but she eluded him
and fled to the fence, and with a laugh he climbed on his horse
and came down the lane. In a burning rage Jason started to slide
down the cliff and pull the intruder, whoever he was, from his
horse, and then he saw Mavis, going swiftly through the fields,
turn and wave her hand. That stopped him still--he could not
punish where there was apparently no offence--so with sullen eyes
he watched the mouth of the lane give up a tall lad on a black
thoroughbred, his hat in his hand and his handsome face still
laughing and still turned for another glimpse of the girl. Another
hand-wave came from Mavis at the edge of the woods, and glowering
Jason stood in full view unseen and watched Gray Pendleton go
thundering past him down the road.

Mavis had not gone to see Marjorie--she had sneaked away to meet
Gray; his lips curled contemptuously--Mavis was a sneak, and so
was Gray Pendleton. Then a thought struck him--why was Mavis
behaving like a brush-girl this way, and why didn't Gray go to see
her in her own home, open and above-board, like a man? The curl of
the boy's lips settled into a straight, grim line, and once more
he turned slowly down the stream that he might approach Steve's
house from another direction. Half an hour later, when he climbed
the turnpike fence, he heard the gallop of iron-shod feet and he
saw bearing down on him an iron-gray horse. It was Marjorie. He
knew her from afar; he gripped the rail beneath him with both
hands and his heart seemed almost to stop. She was looking him
full in the face now, and then, with a nod and a smile she would
have given a beggar or a tramp, she swept him by.




XVII

There was little about Jason and his school career that John
Burnham had not heard from his friend St. Hilda, for she kept
sending at intervals reports of him, so that Burnham knew how
doggedly the lad had worked in school and out; what a leader he
was among his fellows, and how, that he might keep out of the
feud, he had never gone to his grandfather's even during
vacations, except for a day or two, but had hired himself out to
some mountain farmer and had toiled like a slave, always within
St. Hilda's reach. She had won Jason's heart from the start, so
that he had told her frankly about his father's death, the coming
of the geologist, the sale of his home, the flight of his mother
and Steve Hawn, his shooting at Babe Honeycutt, and his own flight
after them, but at the brink of one confession he always balked.
Never could St. Hilda learn just why he had given up the manly
prerogatives of pistol, whiskey-jug, and a deadly purpose of
revenge, to accept in their place, if need be, the despised duties
of women-folks. But his grim and ready willingness for the
exchange appealed to St. Hilda so strongly that she had always
saved him as much of these duties as she could.

The truth was that the school-master had slyly made a diplomatic
use of their mutual interest in Jason that was masterly. There had
been little communication between them since the long-ago days
when she had given him her final decision and gone on her mission
to the mountains, until Jason had come to be an important link
between them. Gradually, after that, St. Hilda had slowly come to
count on the school-master's sympathy and understanding, and more
than once she had written not only for his advice but for his help
as well. And wisely, through it all, Burnham had never sounded the
personal note, and smilingly he had noted the passing of all
suspicion on her part, the birth of her belief that he was cured
of his love for her and would bother her no more, and now, in her
last letter announcing Jason's coming to the Blue-grass, there was
a distinct personal atmosphere that almost made him chuckle. St.
Hilda even wondered whether he might not care, during some
vacation, to come down and see with his own eyes the really
remarkable work he knew she was doing down there. And when he
wrote during the summer that he had been called to the suddenly
vacated chair of geology in the college Jason had been prepared
for, her delight thrilled him, though he had to wonder how much of
it might be due to the fact that her protege would thus be near
him for help and counsel.

His face was almost aglow when he drove out through the gate that
morning on his way to the duties of his first day. The
neighborhood children were already on their way to school, but
they were mostly the children of tobacco tenants, and when he
passed the school-house he saw a young woman on the porch--two
facts that were significant. The neighborhood church was going,
the neighborhood school was going, the man-teacher was gone--and
he himself was perhaps the last of the line that started in
coonskin caps and moccasins. The gentleman farmers who had made
the land distinct and distinguished were renting their acres to
tobacco tenants on shares and were moving to town to get back
their negro servants and to provide their children with proper
schooling. And those children of the gentle people, it seemed,
were growing more and more indifferent to education and culture,
and less and less marked by the gentle manners that were their
birthright. And when he thought of the toll-gate war, the
threatened political violence almost at hand, and the tobacco
troubles which he knew must some day come, he wondered with a sick
heart if a general decadence was not going on in the land for
which he would have given his life in peace as readily as in war.
In the mountains, according to St. Hilda, the people had awakened
from a sleep of a hundred years. Lawlessness was on the decrease,
the feud was disappearing, railroads were coming in, the hills
were beginning to give up the wealth of their timber, iron, and
coal. County schools were increasing, and the pathetic eagerness
of mountain children to learn and the pathetic hardships they
endured to get to school and to stay there made her heart bleed
and his ache to help them. And in his own land, what a contrast!
Three years before, the wedge of free silver had split the State
in twain. Into this breach had sprung that new man with the new
political method that threatened disaster to the commonwealth. To
his supporters, he was the enemy of corporations, the friend of
widows and orphans, the champion of the poor--this man; to his
enemies, he was the most malign figure that had ever thrust head
above the horizon of Kentucky politics--and so John Burnham
regarded him; to both he was the autocrat, cold, exacting,
imperious, and his election bill would make him as completely
master of the commonwealth as Diaz in Mexico or Menelik in
Abyssinia. The dazed people awoke and fought, but the autocrat had
passed his bill. It was incredible, but could he enforce it? No
one knew, but the midsummer convention for the nomination of
governor came, and among the candidates he entered it, the last in
public preference. But he carried that convention at the pistol's
point, came out the Democratic nominee, and now stood smilingly
ready to face the most terrible political storm that had ever
broken over Kentucky. The election was less than two months away,
the State was seething as though on the trembling crisis of a
civil war, and the division that John Burnham expected between
friend and friend, brother and brother, and father and son had
come. The mountains were on fire and there might even be an
invasion from those black hills led by the spirit of the Picts and
Scots of old, and aided and abetted by the head, hand, and tongue
of the best element of the Blue-grass. The people of the Blue-
grass had known little and cared less about these shadowy
hillsmen, but it looked to John Burnham as though they might soon
be forced to know and care more than would be good for the peace
of the State and its threatened good name.

A rattle-trap buggy was crawling up a hill ahead of him, and when
he passed it Steve Hawn was flopping the reins, and by him was
Mavis with a radiant face and sparkling eyes.

"Where's Jason?" John Burnham called, and the girl's face grew
quickly serious.

"Gone on, afoot," laughed Steve loudly. "He started 'bout crack o'
day."

The school-master smiled. On the slope of the next hill, two
carriages, each drawn by a spanking pair of trotters, swept by
him. From one he got a courteous salute from Colonel Pendleton and
a happy shout from Gray, and from the other a radiant greeting
from Marjorie and her mother. Again John Burnham smiled
thoughtfully. For him the hope of the Blue-grass was in the joyous
pair ahead of him, the hope of the mountains was in the girl
behind and the sturdy youth streaking across the dawn-wet fields,
and in the four the hope of his State; and his smile was pleased
and hopeful.

Soon on his left were visible the gray lines of the old
Transylvania University where Jefferson Davis had gone to college
while Abraham Lincoln was splitting rails and studying by
candlelight a hundred miles away, and its campus was dotted with
swiftly moving figures of boys and girls on their way to the
majestic portico on the hill. The streets were filled with eager
young faces, and he drove on through them to the red-brick walls
of the State University, on the other side of the town, where his
labors were to begin. And when, half an hour later, he turned into
the campus afoot, he found himself looking among the boys who
thronged the walk, the yard, and the entrances of the study halls
for the face of Jason Hawn.

Tremblingly the boy had climbed down from the fence after Marjorie
galloped by him the day before, had crossed the pike slowly, sunk
dully at the foot of an oak in the woods beyond, and sat there,
wide-eyed and stunned, until dark. Had he been one of the
followers of the star of Bethlehem, and had that star vanished
suddenly from the heavens, he could hardly have known such
darkness, such despair. For the time Mavis and Gray passed quite
out of the world while he was wrestling with that darkness, and it
was only when he rose shakily to his feet at last that they came
back into it again. Supper was over when he reached the house, but
Mavis had kept it for him, and while she waited on him she tried
to ask him questions about his school-life in the mountains, to
tell him of her own in the Blue-grass--tried to talk about the
opening of college next day, but he sat silent and sullen, and so,
puzzled and full of resentment, she quietly withdrew. After he was
through, he heard her cleaning the dishes and putting them away,
and he saw her that night no more. Next morning, without a word to
her or to his mother, he went out to the barn where Steve was
feeding.

"If you'll bring my things on in the buggy, I reckon I'll just be
goin' on."

"Why, we can all three git in the buggy."

Jason shook his head.

"I hain't goin' to be late."

Steve laughed.

"Well, you'll shore be on time if you start now. Why, Mavis says--
"

But Jason had started swiftly on, and Steve, puzzled, did not try
to stop him. Mavis came out on the porch, and he pointed out the
boy's figure going through the dim fields. "Jason's gone on," he
said, "afeerd he'll be late. That boy's plum' quar."

Jason was making a bee-line for more than the curve of the pike,
for more than the college--he was making it now for everything in
his life that was ahead of him, and he meant now to travel it
without help or hindrance, unswervingly and alone. With St. Hilda,
each day had started for him at dawn, and whether it started that
early at the college in town he did not ask himself or anybody
else. He would wait now for nothing--nobody. The time had come to
start, so he had started on his own new way, stout in body, heart,
and soul, and that was all.

Soft mists of flame were shooting up the eastern horizon, soft
dew-born mists were rising from little hollows and trailing
through the low trees. There had been a withering drought lately,
but the merciful rain had come, the parched earth had drunk deep,
and now under its mantle of rich green it seemed to be heaving
forth one vast long sigh of happy content. The corn was long ready
for the knife, green sprouts of winter wheat were feathering their
way above the rich brown soil, and the cut upturned tobacco
stalks, but dimly seen through the mists, looked like little
hunchbacked witches poised on broomsticks, and ready for flight at
dawn. Vast deviltry those witches had done, for every cut field,
every poor field, recovering from the drastic visit of years
before was rough, weedy, shaggy, unkempt, and worn. The very face
of the land showed decadence, and, in the wake of the witches,
white top, dockweed, ragweed, cockle burr, and sweet fern had up-
leaped like some joyous swarm of criminals unleashed from the hand
of the law, while the beautiful pastures and grassy woodlands,
their dignity outraged, were stretched here and there between
them, helpless, but breathing in the very mists their scorn.

When he reached the white, dusty road, the fires of his ambition
kept on kindling with every step, and his pace, even in the cool
of the early morning, sent his hat to his hand, and plastered his
long lank hair to his temples and the back of his sturdy sunburnt
neck. The sun was hardly star-pointing the horizon when he saw the
luminous smoke-cloud over the town. He quickened his step, and in
his dark eyes those fires leaped into steady flames. The town was
wakening from sleep. The driver of a milk-cart pointed a general
direction for him across the roof-tops, but when he got into the
wilderness of houses he lost that point of the compass and knew
not which way to turn. On a street corner he saw a man in a cap
and a long coat with brass buttons on it, a black stick in his
hand, and something bulging at his hip, and light dawned for
Jason.

"Air you the constable?" he asked, and the policeman grinned
kindly.

"I'm one of 'em," he said.

"Well, how do I git to the college I'm goin' to?"

The officer grinned good-naturedly again, and pointed with his
stick.

"Follow that street, and hurry up or you'll get a whippin'."

"Thar now," thought Jason, and started into a trot up the hill,
and the officer, seeing the boy's suddenly anxious face, called to
him to take it easy, but Jason, finding the pavements rather
uneven, took to the middle of the street, and without looking back
sped on. It was a long run, but Jason never stopped until he saw a
man standing at the door of a long, low, brick building with the
word "Tobacco" painted in huge letters above its closed doors, and
he ran across the street to him.

"Whar's the college?"

The man pointed across the street to an entrance between two gray
stone pillars with pyramidal tops, and Jason trotted back, and
trotted on through them, and up the smooth curve of the road. Not
a soul was in sight, and on the empty steps of the first building
he came to Jason dropped, panting.




XVIII

The campus was thick with grass and full of trees, there were
buildings of red brick everywhere, and all were deserted. He began
to feel that the constable had made game of him, and he was
indignant. Nobody in the mountains would treat a stranger that
way; but he had reached his goal, and, no matter when "school took
up," he was there.

Still, he couldn't help rising restlessly once, and then with a
deep breath he patiently sat down again and waited, looking
eagerly around meanwhile. The trees about him were low and young--
they looked like maples--and multitudinous little gray birds were
flitting and chattering around him, and these he did not know, for
the English sparrow has not yet captured the mountains. Above the
closed doors of the long brick building opposite the stone-guarded
gateway he could see the word "Tobacco" printed in huge letters,
and farther away he could see another similar sign, and somehow he
began wondering why Steve Hawn had talked so much about the
troubles that were coming over tobacco, and seemed to care so
little about the election troubles that had put the whole State on
the wire edge of quivering suspense. Half an hour passed and Jason
was getting restless again, when he saw an old negro shuffling
down the stone walk with a bucket in one hand, a mop in the other,
and trailing one leg like a bird with a broken wing.

"Good-mornin', son."

"Do you know whar John Burnham is?"

"Whut's dat--whut's dat?"

"I'm a-lookin' fer John Burnham."

"Look hyeh, chile, is you referrin' to Perfesser Burnham?"

"I reckon that's him."

"Well, if you is, you better axe fer him jes' that-a-way--
PerFESser PERfesser--Burnham. Well, PERFESSER Burnham won't
sanctify dis hall wid his presence fer quite a long while--quite a
long while. May I inquire, son, if yo' purpose is to attend dis
place o' learnin'?"

"I come to go to college."

"Yassuh, yassuh," said the old negro, and with no insolence
whatever he guffawed loudly.

"Well, suh, looks lak you come a long way, an' you sutinly got
hyeh on time--you sho did. Well, son, you jes' set hyeh as long as
you please an', walk aroun' an' come back an' den ef you set hyeh
long enough agin, you'se a-gwine to see Perfesser Burnham come
right up dese steps."

So Jason took the old man's advice, and strolled around the
grounds. A big pond caught his eye, and he walked along its grassy
bank and under the thick willows that fringed it. He pulled
himself to the top of a high board fence at the upper end of it,
peered over at a broad, smooth athletic-field, and he wondered
what the two poles that stood at each end with a cross-bar between
them could be, and why that tall fence ran all around it. He
stared at the big chimney of the powerhouse, as tall as the trunk
of a poplar in a "deadening" at home, and covered with vines to
the top, and he wondered what on earth that could be. He looked
over the gate at the president's house. Through the windows of one
building he saw hanging rings and all sorts of strange
paraphernalia, and he wondered about them, and, peering through
one ground-floor window, he saw three beds piled one on top of the
other, each separated from the other by the length of its legs. It
would take a step-ladder to get into the top bed--good Lord, did
people sleep that way in this college? Suppose the top boy rolled
out! And every building was covered with vines, and it was funny
that vines grew on houses, and why in the world didn't folks cut
'em off? It was all wonder--nothing but wonder--and he got tired
of wondering and went back to his steps and sat patiently down
again. It was not long now before windows began to bang up and
down in the dormitory near him. Cries and whistles began to
emanate from the rooms, and now and then a head would protrude,
and its eyes never failed, it seemed, to catch and linger on the
lonely, still figure clinging to the steps. Soon there was a rush
of feet downstairs, and a crowd of boys emerged and started
briskly for breakfast. Girls began to appear--short-skirted, with
and without hats, with hair up and hair down--more girls than he
had ever seen before--tall and short, fat and thin, and brunette
and blonde. Students began to stroll through the campus gates, and
now and then a buggy or a carriage would enter and whisk past him
to deposit its occupants in front of the building opposite from
where he sat. What was going on over there? He wanted to go over
and see, for school might be taking up over there, and, from being
too early, he might be too late after all; but he might miss John
Burnham, and if he himself were late, why lots of the boys and
girls about him would be late too, and surely if they knew, which
they must, they would not let that happen. So, all eyes, he sat
on, taking in everything, like the lens of a camera. Some of the
boys wore caps, or little white hats with the crown pushed in all
around, and, though it wasn't muddy and didn't look as though it
were going to rain, each one of them had his "britches" turned up,
and that puzzled the mountain boy sorely; but no matter why they
did it, he wouldn't have to turn his up, for they didn't come to
the tops of his shoes. Swiftly he gathered how different he
himself was, particularly in clothes, from all of them. Nowhere
did he see a boy who matched himself as so lonely and set apart,
but with a shake of his head he tossed off his inner plea for
sympathetic companionship, and the little uneasiness creeping over
him--proudly. There was a little commotion now in the crowd
nearest him, all heads turned one way, and Jason saw approaching
an old gentleman on crutches, a man with a thin face that was all
pure intellect and abnormally keen; that, centuries old in
thought, had yet the unquenchable soul-fire of youth. He stopped,
lifted his hat in response to the cheers that greeted him, and for
a single instant over that thin face played, like the winking eye
of summer lightning, the subtle humor that the world over is
always playing hide-and-seek in the heart of the Scot. A moment,
and Jason halted a passing boy with his eye.

"Who's that ole feller?" he blurted.

The lad looked shocked, for he could not know that Jason meant not
a particle of disrespect.

"That 'ole feller,'" he mimicked indignantly and with scathing
sarcasm, "is the president of this university"; and he hurried on
while Jason miserably shrivelled closer to the steps. After that
he spoke to nobody, and nobody spoke to him, and he lifted his
eyes only to the gateway through which he longed for John Burnham
to come. But the smile of the old president haunted him. There sat
a man on heights no more to be scaled by him than heaven, and yet
that puzzling smile for the blissful ignorance, in the young, of
how gladly the old would give up their crowns in exchange for the
swift young feet on the threshold--no wonder the boy could not
understand. Through that gate dashed presently a pair of proud,
high-headed black horses--"star-gazers," as the Kentuckians call
them--with a rhythmic beat of high-lifted feet, and the boy's eyes
narrowed as the carriage behind them swept by him, for in it were
Colonel Pendleton and Gray, with eager face and flashing eyes.
There was a welcoming shout when Gray leaped out, and a crowd of
students rushed toward him and surrounded him. One of them took
off his hat, lifted both hands above his head, and then they all
barked out a series of barbaric yells with a long shout of Gray's
full name at the end, while the Blue-grass lad stood among them,
flushed and embarrassed but not at all displeased. Again Jason's
brow knitted with wonder, for he could not know what a young god
in that sternly democratic college Gray Pendleton, aristocrat
though he was, had made himself, and he shrank deeper still into
his loneliness and turned wistful eyes again to the gate. Somebody
had halted in front of him, and he looked up to see the same lad
of whom he had just asked a question.

"And that YOUNG feller," said the boy in the same mimicking tone,
"is another president--of the sophomore class and the captain of
the football team."

Lightning-like and belligerent, Jason sprang to his feet. "Air you
pokin' fun at ME?" he asked thickly and clenching his fists.

Genuinely amazed, the other lad stared at him a moment, smiled,
and held out his hand.

"I reckon I was, but you're all right. Shake!"

And within Jason, won by the frank eyes and winning smile, the
tumult died quickly, and he shook--gravely.

"My name's Burns--Jack Burns."

"Mine's Hawn--Jason Hawn."

The other turned away with a wave of his hand.

"See you again."

"Shore," said Jason, and then his breast heaved and his heart
seemed to stop quite still. Another pair of proud horses shot
between the stone pillars, and in the carriage behind them was
Marjorie. The boy dropped to his seat, dropped his chin in both
hands as though to keep his face hidden, but as the sound of her
coming loudened he simply could not help lifting his head. Erect,
happy, smiling, the girl was looking straight past him, and he
felt like one of the yellow grains of dust about her horses' feet.
And then within him a high, shrill little yell rose above the
laughter and vocal hum going on around him--there was John Burnham
coming up the walk, the school-master, John Burnham--and Jason
sprang to meet him. Immediately Burnham's searching eyes fell upon
him, and he stopped--smiling, measuring, surprised. Could this
keen-faced, keen-eyed, sinewy, tall lad be the faithful little
chap who had trudged sturdily at his heels so many days in the
mountains?

"Well, well, well," he said; "why, I wouldn't have known you. You
got here in time, didn't you?"

"I have been waitin' fer you," said Jason. "Miss Hilda told me to
come straight to you."

"That's right--how is she?"

"She ain't well--she works too hard."

The school-master shook his head with grave concern.

"I know. You've been lucky, Jason. She is the best woman on
earth."

"I'd lay right down here an' die fer her right now," said the lad
soberly. So would John Burnham, and he loved the lad for saying
that.

"She said you was the best man on earth--but I knowed that," the
lad went on simply; "an' she told me to tell you to make me keep
out o' fights and study hard and behave."

"All right, Jason," said Burnham with a smile. "Have you
matriculated yet?"

Jason was not to be caught napping. His eyes gave out the quick
light of humor, but his face was serious.

"I been so busy waitin' fer you that I reckon I must 'a' forgot
that."

The school-master laughed.

"Come along."

Through the thick crowd that gave way respectfully to the new
professor, Jason followed across the road to the building
opposite, and up the steps into a room where he told his name and
his age, and the name of his father and mother, and pulled from
his pooket a little roll of dirty bills. There was a fee of five
dollars for "janitor"; Jason did not know what a janitor was, but
John Burnham nodded when he looked up inquiringly and Jason asked
no question. There was another fee for "breakage," and that was
all, but the latter item was too much for Jason.

"S'pose I don't break nothin'," he asked shrewdly, "do I git that
back?"

Then registrar and professor laughed.

"You get it back."

Down they went again.

"That's a mighty big word fer such little doin's," the boy said
soberly, and the school-master smiled.

"You'll find just that all through college now, Jason, but don't
wait to find out what the big word means."

"I won't," said Jason, "next time."

Many eyes now looked on the lad curiously when he followed John
Burnham back through the crowd to the steps, where the new
professor paused.

"I passed Mavis on the road. I wonder if she has come."

"I don't know," said Jason, and a curious something in his tone
made John Burnham look at him quickly--but he said nothing.

"Oh well," he said presently, "she knows what to do."

A few minutes later the two were alone in the new professor's
recitation-room.

"Have you seen Marjorie and Gray?"

The lad hesitated.

"I seed--I saw 'em when they come in."

"Gray finishes my course this year. He's going to be a civil
engineer."

"So'm I," said Jason; and the quick shortness of his tone again
made John Burnham look keenly at him.

"You know a good deal about geology already--are you going to take
my course too?"

"I want to know just what to do with that land o' mine. I ain't
forgot what you told me--to go away and git an education--and when
I come back what that land 'ud be worth."

"Yes, but--"

The lad's face had paled and his mouth had set.

"I'm goin' to git it back."

Behind them the door had opened, and Gray's spirited, smiling face
was thrust in.

"Good morning, professor," he cried, and then, seeing Jason, he
came swiftly in with his hand outstretched.

"Why, how are you, Jason? Mavis told me yesterday you were here.
I've been looking for you. Glad to see you."

Watching both, John Burnham saw the look of surprise in Gray's
face when the mountain boy's whole frame stiffened into the
rigidity of steel, saw the haughty uplifting of the Blue-grass
boy's chin, as he wheeled to go, and like Gray, he, too, thought
Jason had never forgotten the old feud between them. For a moment
he was tempted to caution Jason about the folly of it all, but as
suddenly he changed his mind. Outside a bugle blew.

"Go on down, Jason," he said instead, "and follow the crowd--
that's chapel--prayer-meeting," he explained.

At the foot of the stairs the boy mingled with the youthful stream
pouring through the wide doors of the chapel hall. He turned to
the left and was met by the smiling eyes of his new acquaintance,
Burns, who waved him good-humoredly away:

"This is the sophomore corner--I reckon you belong in there."

And toward the centre Jason went among the green, the countrified,
the uneasy, and the unkempt. The other half of the hall was banked
with the faces of young girls--fresh as flowers--and everywhere
were youth and eagerness, eagerness and youth. The members of the
faculty were climbing the steps to a platform and ranging
themselves about the old gentleman with the crutches. John Burnham
entered, and the vault above rocked with the same barbaric yells
that Jason had heard given Gray Pendleton, for Burnham had been a
mighty foot-ball player in his college days. The old president
rose, and the tumult sank to reverential silence while a silver
tongue sent its beautiful diction on high in a prayer for the
bodies, the minds, and the souls of the whole buoyant throng in
the race for which they were about to be let loose. And that was
just what the tense uplifted faces suggested to John Burnham--he
felt in them the spirit of the thoroughbred at the post, the young
hound straining at the leash, the falcon unhooded for flight,
when, at the president's nod, he rose to his feet to speak to the
host the welcome of the faculty within these college walls and the
welcome of the Blue-grass to the strangers from the confines of
the State--particularly to those who had journeyed from their
mountain homes. "These young people from the hills," he said, "for
their own encouragement and for all patience in their own
struggle, must always remember, and the young men and women of the
Blue-grass, for tolerance and a better understanding, must never
forget, in what darkness and for how long their sturdy kinspeople
had lived, how they were just wakening from a sleep into which,
not of their own fault, they had lapsed but little after the
Revolution; how eagerly they had strained their eyes for the first
glimmer from the outside world that had come to them, and how
earnestly now they were fighting toward the light. So isolated, so
primitive were they only a short while ago that neighbor would go
to neighbor asking 'Lend us fire,' and now they were but asking of
the outer world, 'Lend us fire.' And he hoped that the young men
and women from those dark fastnesses who had come there to light
their torches would keep them burning, and take them back home
still sacredly aflame, so that in the hills the old question with
its new meaning could never again be asked in vain."

Jason's eyes had never wavered from the speaker's face, nor had
Gray's, but, while John Burnham purposely avoided the eyes of
both, he noted here and there the sudden squaring of shoulders,
and the face of a mountain boy or girl lift quickly and with open-
mouthed interest remain fixed; and far back he saw Mavis, wide-
eyed and deep in some new-born dream, and he thought he saw
Marjorie turn at the end to look at the mountain girl as though to
smile understanding and sympathy. A mental tumult still held Jason
when the crowd about him rose to go, and he kept his seat. John
Burnham had been talking about Mavis and him, and maybe about
Marjorie and Gray, and he had a vague desire to see the school-
master again. Moreover, a doubt, at once welcome and disturbing to
him, had coursed through his brain. If secret meetings in lanes
and by-ways were going on between Mavis and Gray, Gray would
hardly have been so frank in saying he had seen Mavis the previous
afternoon for Gray must know that Jason knew there had been no
meeting at Steve Hawn's house. Perhaps Gray had overtaken her in
the lane quite by accident, and the boy was bothered and felt
rather foolish and ashamed when, seeing John Burnham still busy on
the platform, he rose to leave.

On the steps more confusion awaited him. A group of girls was
standing to one side of them, and he turned hurriedly the other
way. Light footsteps followed him, and a voice called:

"Oh, Jason!"

His blood rushed, and he turned dizzily, for he knew it was
Marjorie. In her frank eyes was a merry smile instead of the tear
that had fixed them in his memory, but the clasp of her hand was
the same.

"Why, I didn't know you yesterday--did I? No wonder. Why, I
wouldn't have known you now if I hadn't been looking for you.
Mavis told me you'd come. Dear me, what a BIG man you are.
Professor Burnham told me all about you, and I've been so proud.
Why, I came near writing to you several times. I'm expecting you
to lead your class here, and"--she took in with frank admiration
his height and the breadth of his shoulders--"Gray will want you,
maybe, for the foot-ball team."

The crowds of girls near by were boring him into the very ground
with their eyes. His feet and his hands had grown to enormous
proportions and seemed suddenly to belong to somebody else. He
felt like an ant in a grain-hopper, or as though he were deep
under water in a long dive and must in a moment actually gasp for
breath. And, remembering St. Hilda, he did manage to get his hat
off, but he was speechless. Marjorie paused, the smile did not
leave her eyes, but it turned serious, and she lowered her voice a
little.

"Did you keep your promise, Jason?"

Then the boy found himself, and as he had said before, that winter
dusk, he said now soberly:

"I give you my hand."

And, as before, taking him literally, Marjorie again stretched out
her hand.

"I'm so glad."

Once more the bugle sent its mellow summons through the air.

"And you are coming to our house some Saturday night to go coon-
hunting--good-by."

Jason turned weakly away, and all the rest of the day he felt
dazed. He did not want to see Mavis or Gray or Marjorie again, or
even John Burnham. So he started back home afoot, and all the way
he kept to the fields through fear that some one of them might
overtake him on the road, for he wanted to be alone. And those
fields looked more friendly now than they had looked at dawn, and
his heart grew lighter with every step. Now and then a rabbit
leaped from the grass before him, or a squirrel whisked up the
rattling bark of a hickory-tree. A sparrow trilled from the
swaying top of a purple ironwood, and from grass, and fence-rail,
and awing, meadow larks were fluting everywhere, but the song of
no wood-thrush reached his waiting ear. Over and over again his
brain reviewed every incident of the day, only to end each time
with Marjorie's voice, her smile with its new quality of mischief,
and the touch of her hand. She had not forgotten--that was the
thrill of it all--and she had even asked if he had kept his
promise to her. And at that thought his soul darkened, for the day
would come when he must ask to be absolved of one part of that
promise, as on that day he must be up and on his dead father's
business. And he wondered what, when he told her, she would say.
It was curious, but the sense of the crime involved was naught, as
was the possible effect of it on his college career--it was only
what that girl would say. But the day might still be long off, and
he had so schooled himself to throwing aside the old deep,
sinister purpose that he threw it off now and gave himself up to
the bubbling relief that had come to him. That meeting in the lane
must have been chance, John Burnham was kind, and Marjorie had not
forgotten. He was not alone in the world, nor was he even lonely,
for everywhere that day he had found a hand stretched out to help
him.

Mavis was sitting on the porch when he walked through the gate,
and the moment she saw his face a glad light shone in her own, for
it was the old Jason coming back to her:

"Mavie," he said huskily, "I reckon I'm the biggest fool this side
o' hell, whar I reckon I ought to be."

Mavis asked no question, made no answer. She merely looked
steadily at him for a moment, and then, brushing quickly at her
eyes, she rose and turned into the house. The sun gave way to
darkness, but it kept on shining in Jason's heart, and when at
bedtime he stood again on the porch, his gratitude went up to the
very stars. He heard Mavis behind him, but he did not turn, for
all he had to say he had said, and the break in his reserve was
over.

"I'm glad you come back, Jasie," was all she said, shyly, for she
understood, and then she added the little phrase that is not often
used in the mountain world:

"Good-night."

From St. Hilda, Jason, too, had learned that phrase, and he spoke
it with a gruffness that made the girl smile:

"Good-night, Mavie."




XIX

Jason drew the top bed in a bare-walled, bare-floored room with
two other boys, as green and countrified as was he, and he took
turns with them making up those beds, carrying water for the one
tin basin, and sweeping up the floor with the broom that stood in
the corner behind it. But even then the stark simplicity of his
life was a luxury. His meals cost him three dollars a week, and
that most serious item began to worry him, but not for long.
Within two weeks he was meeting a part of that outlay by
delivering the morning daily paper of the town. This meant getting
up at half past three in the morning, after a sleep of five hours
and a half, but if this should begin to wear on him, he would
simply go earlier to bed; there was no sign of wear and tear,
however, for the boy was as tough as a bolt-proof black gum-tree
back in the hills, his capacity for work was prodigious, and the
early rising hour but lengthened the range of each day's
activities. Indeed Jason missed nothing and nothing missed him.
His novitiate passed quickly, and while his fund for "breakage"
was almost gone, he had, without knowing it, drawn no little
attention to himself. He had wandered innocently into "Heaven"--
the seniors' hall--a satanic offence for a freshman, and he had
been stretched over a chair, "strapped," and thrown out. But at
dawn next morning he was waiting at the entrance and when four
seniors appeared he tackled them all valiantly. Three held him
while the fourth went for a pair of scissors, for thus far Jason
had escaped the tonsorial betterment that had been inflicted on
most of his classmates. The boy stood still, but in a relaxed
moment of vigilance he tore loose just as the scissors appeared,
and fled for the building opposite. There he turned with his back
to the wall. "When I want my hair cut, I'll git my mammy to do it
or pay fer it myself," he said quietly, but his face was white.
When they rushed on, he thrust his hand into his shirt and pulled
it out with a mighty oath of helplessness--he had forgotten his
knife. They cut his hair, but it cost them two bloody noses and
one black eye. At the flag-rush later he did not forget. The
sophomores had enticed the freshmen into the gymnasium, stripped
them of their clothes, and carried them away, whereat the freshmen
got into the locker-rooms of the girls, and a few moments later
rushed from the gymnasium in bloomers to find the sophomores
crowded about the base of the pole, one of them with an axe in his
hand, and Jason at the top with his hand again in his shirt.

"Chop away!" he was shouting, "but I'll git SOME o' ye when this
pole comes down." Above the din rose John Burnham's voice, stern
and angry, calling Jason's name. The student with the axe had
halted at the unmistakable sincerity of the boy's threat.

"Jason," called Burnham again, for he knew what the boy meant, and
the lad tossed knife and scabbard over the heads of the crowd to
the grass, and slid down the pole. And in the fight that followed,
the mountain boy fought with a calm, half-smiling ferocity that
made the wavering freshmen instinctively surge behind him as a
leader, and the onlooking foot-ball coach quickly mark him for his
own. Even at the first foot-ball "rally," where he learned the
college yells, Jason had been singled out, for the mountaineer
measures distance by the carry of his voice and with a "whoop an'
a holler" the boy could cover a mile. Above the din, Jason's clear
cry was, so to speak, like a cracker on the whip of the cheer, and
the "yell-master," a swaying figure of frenzied enthusiasm, caught
his eye in time, nodded approvingly, and saw in him a possible
yell-leader for the freshman class. After the rally the piano was
rolled joyously to the centre of the gymnasium and a pale-faced
lad began to thump it vigorously, much to Jason's disapproval, for
he could not understand how a boy could, or would, play anything
but a banjo or a fiddle. Then, with the accompaniment of a snare-
drum, there was a merry, informal dance, at which Jason and Mavis
looked yearningly on. And, as that night long ago in the
mountains, Gray and Marjorie floated like feathers past them, and
over Gray's shoulder the girl's eyes caught Jason's fixed on her,
and Mavis's fixed on Gray; so on the next round she stopped a
moment near them.

"I'm going to teach you to dance, Jason," she said, as though she
were tossing a gauntlet to somebody, "and Gray can teach Mavis."

"Sure," laughed Gray, and off they whirled again.

The eyes of the two mountaineers met, and they might have been
back in their childhood again, standing on the sunny river-bank
and waiting for Gray and Marjorie to pass, for what their tongues
said then their eyes said now:

"I seed you a-lookin' at him."

"'Tain't so--I seed you a-lookin' at her."

And it was true now as it was then, and then as now both knew it
and both flushed. Jason turned abruptly away, for he knew more of
Mavis's secret than she of his, and it was partly for that reason
that he had not yet opened his lips to her. He had seen no
consciousness in Gray's face, he resented the fact, somehow, that
there was none, and his lulled suspicions began to stir again
within him. In Marjorie's face he had missed what Mavis had
caught, a fleeting spirit of mischief, which stung the mountain
girl with jealousy and a quick fierce desire to protect Jason,
just as Jason, with the same motive, was making up his mind again
to keep a close eye on Gray Pendleton. As for Marjorie, she, too,
knew more of Mavis's secret than Mavis knew of hers, and of the
four, indeed, she was by far the wisest. During the years that
Jason was in the hills she had read as on an open page the meaning
of the mountain girl's flush at any unexpected appearance of Gray,
the dumb adoration for him in her dark eyes, and more than once,
riding in the woods, she had come upon Mavis, seated at the foot
of an oak, screened by a clump of elder-bushes and patiently
waiting, as Marjorie knew, to watch Gray gallop by. She even knew
how unconsciously Gray had been drawn by all this toward Mavis,
but she had not bothered her head to think how much he was drawn
until just before the opening of the college year, for, from the
other side of the hill, she, too, had witnessed the meeting in the
lane that Jason had seen, and had wondered about it just as much,
though she, too, had kept still. That the two boys knew so little,
that the two girls knew so much, and that each girl resented the
other's interest in her own cousin, was merely a distinction of
sex, as was the fact that matters would have to be made very clear
before Jason or Gray could see and understand. And for them
matters were to become clearer, at least--very soon.




XX

Already the coach had asked Jason to try foot-ball, but the boy
had kept away from the field, for the truth was that he had but
one suit of clothes and he couldn't afford to have them soiled and
torn. Gray suspected this, and told the coach, who explained to
Jason that practice clothes would be furnished him, but still the
boy did not come until one day when, out of curiosity, he wandered
over to the field to see what the game was like. Soon his eyes
brightened, his lips parted, and his face grew tense as the
players swayed, clenched struggling, fell in a heap, and leaped to
their feet again. And everywhere he saw Gray's yellow head darting
among them like a sun-ball, and he began to wonder, if he could
not outrun and outwrestle his old enemy. He began to fidget in his
seat and presently he could stand it no longer, and he ran out
into the field and touched the coach on the shoulder.

"Can I git them clothes now?"

The coach looked at his excited face, nodded with a smile, and
pointed to the gymnasium, and Jason was off in a run.

The matter was settled in the thrill and struggle of that one
practice game, and right away Jason showed extraordinary aptitude,
for he was quick, fleet, and strong, and the generalship and
tactics of the game fascinated him from the start. And when he
discovered that the training-table meant a savings-bank for him,
he counted his money, gave up the morning papers without
hesitation or doubt, and started in for the team. Thus he and Gray
were brought violently together on the field, for within two weeks
Jason was on the second team, but the chasm between them did not
close. Gray treated the mountain boy with a sort of curt courtesy,
and while Jason tackled him, fell upon him with a savage thrill,
and sometimes wanted to keep on tightening his wiry arms and
throttling him, the mountain boy could discover no personal
feeling whatever against him in return, and he was mystified. With
the ingrained suspicion of the mountaineer toward an enemy, he
supposed Gray had some cunning purpose. As captain, Gray had been
bound, Jason knew, to put him on the second team, but as day after
day went by and the magic word that he longed for went unsaid, the
boy began to believe that the sinister purpose of Gray's
concealment was, without evident prejudice, to keep him off the
college team. The ball was about to be snapped back on Gray's
side, and Gray had given him one careless, indifferent glance over
the bent backs of the guards, when Jason came to this conclusion,
and his heart began to pound with rage. There was the shock of
bodies, the ball disappeared from his sight, he saw Gray's yellow
head dart three times, each time a different way, and then it
flashed down the side line with a clear field for the goal. With a
bound Jason was after him, and he knew that even if Gray had
wings, he would catch him. With a flying leap he hurled himself on
the speeding figure, in front of him, he heard Gray's breath go
out in a quick gasp under the fierce lock of his arms, and, as
they crashed to the ground, Jason for one savage moment wanted to
use his teeth on the back of the sunburnt neck under him, but he
sprang to his feet, fists clenched and ready for the fight. With
another gasp Gray, too, sprang lightly up.

"Good!" he said heartily.

No mortal fist could have laid Jason quite so low as that one
word. The coach's whistle blew and Gray added carelessly: "Come
around, Hawn, to the training-table to-night."

No mortal command could have filled him with so much shame, and
Jason stood stock-still and speechless. Then, fumbling for an
instant at his shirt collar as though he were choking, he walked
swiftly away. As he passed the benches he saw Mavis and Marjorie,
who had been watching the practice. Apparently Mavis had started
out into the field, and Marjorie, bewildered by her indignant
outcry, had risen to follow her; and Jason, when he met the
accusing fire of his cousin's eyes, knew that she alone, on the
field, had understood it all, that she had started with the
impulse of protecting Gray, and his shame went deeper still. He
did not go to the training-table that night, and the moonlight
found him under the old willows wondering and brooding, as he had
been--long and hard. Gray was too much for him, and the mountain
boy had not been able to solve the mystery of the Blue-grass boy's
power over his fellows, for the social complexity of things had
unravelled very slowly for Jason. He saw that each county had
brought its local patriotism to college and had its county club.
There were too few students from the hills and a sectional club
was forming, "The Mountain Club," into which Jason naturally had
gone; but broadly the students were divided into "frat" men and
"non-frat" men, chiefly along social lines, and there were
literary clubs of which the watchword was merit and nothing else.
In all these sectional cliques from the Purchase, Pennyroyal, and
Peavine, as the western border of the State, the southern border,
and the eastern border of hills were called; indeed, in all the
sections except the Bear-grass, where was the largest town and
where the greatest wealth of the State was concentrated, he found
a widespread, subconscious, home-nursed resentment brought to that
college against the lordly Blue-grass. In the social life of the
college he found that resentment rarely if ever voiced, but always
tirelessly at work. He was not surprised then to discover that in
the history of the college, Gray Pendleton was the first
plainsman, the first aristocrat, who had ever been captain of the
team and the president of his class. He began to understand now,
for he could feel the tendrils of the boy's magnetic personality
enclosing even him, and by and by he could stand it no longer, and
he went to Gray.

"I wanted to kill you that day."

Gray smiled.

"I knew it," he said quietly.

"Then why--"

"We were playing foot-ball. Almost anybody can lose his head
ENTIRELY--but YOU didn't. That's why I didn't say anything to you
afterward. That's why you'll be captain of the team after I'm
gone."

Again Jason choked, and again he turned speechless away, and then
and there was born within him an idolatry for Gray that was
carefully locked in his own breast, for your mountaineer openly
worships, and then but shyly, the Almighty alone. Jason no longer
wondered about the attitude of faculty and students of both sexes
toward Gray, no longer at Mavis, but at Marjorie he kept on
wondering mightily, for she alone seemed the one exception to the
general rule. Like everybody else, Jason knew the parental purpose
where those two were concerned, and he began to laugh at the
daring presumptions of his own past dreams and to worship now only
from afar. But he could not know the effect of that parental
purpose on that wilful, high-strung young person, the pique that
Gray's frank interest in Mavis brought to life within her, and he
was not yet far enough along in the classics to suspect that
Marjorie might weary of hearing Aristides called the Just. Nor
could he know the spirit of coquetry that lurked deep behind her
serious eyes, and was for that reason the more dangerously
effective.

He only began to notice one morning, after the foot-ball incident,
that Marjorie was beginning to notice him; that, worshipped now
only on the horizon, his star seemed to be drawing a little
nearer. A passing lecturer had told Jason much of himself and his
people that morning. The mountain people, said the speaker, still
lived like the pioneer forefathers of the rest of the State.
Indeed they were "our contemporary ancestors"; so that,
sociologically speaking, Jason, young as he was, was the ancestor
of all around him. The thought made him grin and, looking up, he
caught the mischievous eyes of Marjorie, who later seemed to be
waiting for him on the steps:

"Good-morning, grandfather," she said demurely, and went rapidly
on her way.




XXI

Meanwhile that political storm was raging and Jason got at the
heart of it through his morning paper and John Burnham. He knew
that at home Republicans ran against Republicans for all offices,
and now he learned that his own mountains were the Gibraltar of
that party, and that the line of its fortifications ran from the
Big Sandy, three hundred miles by public roads, to the line of
Tennessee. When free silver had shattered the Democratic ranks
three years before, the mountaineers had leaped forth and unfurled
the Republican flag over the State for the first time since the
Civil War. Ballots were falsified--that was the Democratic cry,
and that was the Democratic excuse for that election law which had
been forced through the Senate, whipped through the lower house
with the party lash, and passed over the veto of the Republican
governor by the new Democratic leader--the bold, cool, crafty,
silent autocrat. From bombastic orators Jason learned that a fair
ballot was the bulwark of freedom, that some God-given bill of
rights had been smashed, and the very altar of liberty desecrated.
And when John Burnham explained how the autocrat's triumvirate
could at will appoint and remove officers of election, canvass
returns, and certify and determine results, he could understand
how the "atrocious measure," as the great editor of the State
called it, "was a ready chariot to the governor's chair." And in
the summer convention the spirit behind the measure had started
for that goal in just that way, like a scythe-bearing chariot of
ancient days, but cutting down friend as well as foe. Straightway,
Democrats long in line for honors, and gray in the councils of the
party, bolted; the rural press bolted; and Jason heard one bolter
thus cry his fealty and his faithlessness: "As charged, I do stand
ready to vote for a yellow dog, if he be the regular nominee, but
lower than that you shall not drag me."

The autocrat's retort was courteous.

"You have a brother in the penitentiary."

"No," was the answer, "but your brothers have a brother who ought
to be."

The pulpit thundered. Half a million Kentuckians, "professing
Christians and temperance advocates," repudiated the autocrat's
claim to support. A new convention was the cry, and the wheel-
horse of the party, an ex-Confederate, ex-governor, and
aristocrat, answered that cry. The leadership of the Democratic
bolters he took as a "sacred duty"--took it with the gentle
statement that the man who tampers with the rights of the humblest
citizen is worse than the assassin, and should be streaked with a
felon's stripes, and suffered to speak only through barred doors.
From the same tongue, Jason heard with puckered brow that the
honored and honest yeomanry of the commonwealth, through coalition
by judge and politician, would be hoodwinked by the leger-demain
of ballot-juggling magicians; but he did understand when he heard
this yeomanry called brave, adventurous self-gods of creation,
slow to anger and patient with wrongs, but when once stirred, let
the man who had done the wrong--beware! Long ago Jason had heard
the Republican chieftain who was to be pitted against such a foe
characterized as "a plain, unknown man, a hill-billy from the
Pennyroyal, and the nominee because there was no opposition and no
hope." But hope was running high now, and now with the aristocrat,
the autocrat, and the plebeian from the Pennyroyal--whose slogan
was the repeal of the autocrat's election law--the tricornered
fight was on.

On a hot day in the star county of the star district, the
autocrat, like Caesar, had a fainting fit and left the Democrats,
explaining for the rest of the campaign that Republican eyes had
seen a big dirk under his coat; and Jason never rested until with
his own eyes he had seen the man who had begun to possess his
brain like an evil dream. And he did see him and heard him defend
his law as better than the old one, and declare that never again
could the Democrats steal the State with mountain votes--heard him
confidently leave to the common people to decide whether
imperialism should replace democracy, trusts destroy the business
of man with man, and whether the big railroad of the State was the
servant or the master of the people. He heard a senator from the
national capital, whose fortunes were linked with the autocrat's,
declare that leader as the most maligned figure in American
politics, and that he was without a blemish or vice on his private
or public life, but, unlike Pontius Pilate, Jason never thought to
ask himself what was truth, for, in spite of the mountaineer's
Blue-grass allies, the lad had come to believe that there was a
State conspiracy to rob his own people of their rights. This
autocrat was the head and front of that conspiracy; while he spoke
the boy's hatred grew with every word, and turned personal, so
that at the close of the speech he moved near the man with a
fierce desire to fly at his throat then and there. The boy even
caught one sweeping look--cool, fearless, insolent, scorning--the
look the man had for his enemies--and he was left with swimming
head and trembling knees. Then the great Nebraskan came, and Jason
heard him tell the people to vote against him for President if
they pleased--but to stand by Democracy; and in his paper next
morning Jason saw a cartoon of the autocrat driving the great
editor and the Nebraskan on a race-track, hitched together, but
pulling like oxen apart. And through the whole campaign he heard
the one Republican cry ringing like a bell through the State:
"Elect the ticket by a majority that CAN'T be counted out."

Thus the storm went on, the Republicans crying for a free ballot
and a fair count, flaunting on a banner the picture of a man
stuffing a ballot-box and two men with shot-guns playfully
interrupting the performance, and hammering into the head of the
State that no man could be trusted with unlimited power over the
suffrage of a free people. Any ex-Confederate who was for the
autocrat, any repentant bolter that swung away from the
aristocrat, any negro that was against the man from the
Pennyroyal, was lifted by the beneficiary to be looked on by the
public eye. The autocrat would cut down a Republican majority by
contesting votes and throw the matter into the hands of the
legislature--that was the Republican prophecy and the Republican
fear. Manufacturers, merchants, and ministers pleaded for a fair
election. An anti-autocratic grip became prevalent in the hills.
The Hawns and Honeycutts sent word that they had buried the feud
for a while and would fight like brothers for their rights, and
from more than one mountain county came the homely threat that if
those rights were denied, there would somewhere be "a mighty
shovellin' of dirt." And so to the last minute the fight went on.

The boy's head buzzed and ached with the multifarious interests
that filled it, but for all that the autumn was all gold for him
and with both hands he gathered it in. Sometimes he would go home
with Gray for Sunday. With Colonel Pendleton for master, he was
initiated into exercises with dirk and fencing-foil, for not yet
was the boxing-glove considered meet, by that still old-fashioned
courtier, for the hand of a gentleman. Sometimes he would spend
Sunday with John Burnham, and wander with him through the wonders
of Morton Sanders' great farm, and he listened to Burnham and the
colonel talk politics and tobacco, and the old days, and the
destructive changes that were subtly undermining the glories of
those old days. In the tri-cornered foot-ball fight for the State
championship, he had played one game with Central University and
one with old Transylvania, and he had learned the joy of victory
in one and in the other the heart-sickening depression of defeat.
One never-to-be-forgotten night he had gone coon-hunting with
Mavis and Marjorie and Gray--riding slowly through shadowy woods,
or recklessly galloping over the blue-grass fields, and again, as
many times before, he felt his heart pounding with emotions that
seemed almost to make it burst.

For Marjorie, child of sunlight, and Mavis, child of shadows,
riding bareheaded together under the brilliant moon, were the twin
spirits of the night, and that moon dimmed the eyes of both only
as she dimmed the stars. He saw Mavis swerving at every stop and
every gallop to Gray's side, and always he found Marjorie
somewhere near him. And only John Burnham understood it all, and
he wondered and smiled, and with the smile wondered again.

There had been no time for dancing lessons, but the little comedy
of sentiment went on just the same. In neither Mavis nor Jason was
there the slightest consciousness of any chasm between them and
Marjorie and Gray, though at times both felt in the latter pair a
vague atmosphere that neither would for a long time be able to
define as patronage, and so when Jason received an invitation to
the first dance given in the hotel ballroom in town, he went
straight to Marjorie and solemnly asked "the pleasure of her
company" that night.

For a moment Marjorie was speechless.

"Why, Jason," she gasped, "I--I--you're a freshman, and anyhow--"

For the first time the boy gained an inkling of that chasm, and
his eyes turned so fiercely sombre and suspicious that she added
in a hurry:

"It's a joke, Jason--that invitation. No freshman can go to one of
those dances."

Jason looked perplexed now, and still a little suspicious.

"Who'll keep me from goin'?" he asked quietly,

"The sophomores. They sent you that invitation to get you into
trouble. They'll tear your clothes off."

As was the habit of his grandfather Hawn, Jason's tongue went
reflectively to the hollow of one cheek, and his eyes dropped to
the yellow leaves about their feet, and Marjorie waited with a
tingling thrill that some vague thing of importance was going to
happen. Jason's face was very calm when he looked up at last, and
he held out the card of invitation.

"Will that git--get me in, when I a-get to the door?"

"Of course, but--"

"Then I'll be th-there," said Jason, and he turned away.

Now Marjorie knew that Gray expected to take her to that dance,
but he had not yet even mentioned it. Jason had come to her swift
and straight; the thrill still tingled within her, and before she
knew it she had cried impulsively:

"Jason, if you get to that dance, I'll--I'll dance every square
dance with you."

Jason nodded simply and turned away.

The mischief-makers soon learned the boy's purpose, and there was
great joy among them, and when Gray finally asked Marjorie to go
with him, she demurely told him she was going with Jason. Gray was
amazed and indignant, and he pleaded with her not to do anything
so foolish.

"Why, it's outrageous. It will be the talk of the town. Your
mother won't like it. Maybe they won't do anything to him because
you are along, but they might, and think of you being mixed up in
such a mess. Anyhow I tell you--you CAN'T do it."

Marjorie paled and Gray got a look from her that he had never had
before.

"Did I hear you say 'CAN'T'?" she asked coldly. "Well, I'm not
going with him--he won't let me. He's going alone. I'll meet him
there."

Gray made a helpless gesture.

"Well, I'll try to get the fellows to let him alone--on your
account."

"Don't bother--he can take care of himself."

"Why, Marjorie!"

The girl's coldness was turning to fire.

"Why don't you take Mavis?"

Gray started an impatient refusal, and stopped--Mavis was passing
in the grass on the other side of the road, and her face was
flaming violently.

"She heard you," said Gray in a low voice.

The heel of one of Marjorie's little boots came sharply down on
the gravelled road.

"Yes, and I hope she heard YOU--and don't you ever--ever--ever say
CAN'T to me again." And she flashed away.

The news went rapidly through the college and, as Gray predicted,
became the talk of the young people of the town, Marjorie's mother
did object violently, but Marjorie remained firm--what harm was
there in dancing with Jason Hawn, even if he was a poor
mountaineer and a freshman? She was not a snob, even if Gray was.
Jason himself was quiet, non-communicative, dignified. He refused
to discuss the matter with anybody, ignored comment and curiosity,
and his very silence sent a wave of uneasiness through some of the
sophomores and puzzled them all. Even John Burnham, who had
severely reprimanded and shamed Jason for the flag incident,
gravely advised the boy not to go, but even to him Jason was
respectfully non-committal, for this was a matter that, as the boy
saw it, involved his RIGHTS, and the excitement grew quite
feverish when one bit of news leaked out. At the beginning of the
session the old president, perhaps in view of the political
turmoil imminent, had made a request that one would hardly hear in
the chapel of any other hall of learning in the broad United
States.

"If any student had brought with him to college any weapon or
fire-arm, he would please deliver it to the commandant, who would
return it to him at the end of the session, or whenever he should
leave college."

Now Jason had deliberated deeply on that request; on the point of
personal privilege involved he differed with the president, and a
few days before the dance one of his room-mates found not only a
knife, but a huge pistol--relics of Jason's feudal days--
protruding from the top bed. This was the bit of news that leaked,
and Marjorie paled when she heard it, but her word was given, and
she would keep it. There was no sneaking on Jason's part that
night, and when a crowd of sophomores gathered at the entrance of
his dormitory they found a night-hawk that Jason had hired,
waiting at the door, and patiently they waited for Jason.

Down at the hotel ballroom Gray and Marjorie waited, Gray anxious,
worried, and angry, and Marjorie with shining eyes and a pale but
determined face. And she shot a triumphant glance toward Gray when
she saw the figure of the young mountaineer framed at last in the
doorway of the ballroom. There Jason stood a moment, uncouth and
stock-still. His eyes moved only until he caught sight of
Marjorie, and then, with them fixed steadily on her, he solemnly
walked through the sudden silence that swiftly spread through the
room straight for her. He stood cool, calm, and with a curious
dignity before her, and the only sign of his emotion was in a
reckless lapse into his mountain speech.

"I've come to tell ye I can't dance with ye. Nobody can keep me
from goin' whar I've got a right to go, but I won't stay nowhar
I'm not wanted."

And, without waiting for her answer, he turned and stalked
solemnly out again.




XXII

The miracle had happened, and just how nobody could ever say. The
boy had appeared in the door-way and had paused there full in the
light. No revolver was visible--it could hardly have been
concealed in the much-too-small clothes that he wore--and his eyes
flashed no challenge. But he stood there an instant, with face set
and stern, and then he walked slowly to the old rattletrap
vehicle, and, unchallenged, drove away, as, unchallenged, he
walked quietly back to his room again. That defiance alone would
have marked him with no little dignity. It gave John Burnham a
great deal of carefully concealed joy, it dumfounded Gray, and,
while Mavis took it as a matter of course, it thrilled Marjorie,
saddened her, and made her a little ashamed. Nor did it end there.
Some change was quickly apparent to Jason in Mavis. She turned
brooding and sullen, and one day when she and Jason met Gray in
the college yard, she averted her eyes when the latter lifted his
cap, and pretended not to see him. Jason saw an uneasy look in
Gray's eyes, and when he turned questioningly to Mavis, her face
was pale with anger. That night he went home with her to see his
mother, and when the two sat on the porch in the dim starlight
after supper, he bluntly asked her what the matter was, and
bluntly she told him. Only once before had he ever spoken of Gray
to Mavis, and that was about the meeting in the lane, and then she
scorned to tell him whether or not the meeting was accidental, and
Jason knew thereby that it was. Unfortunately he had not stopped
there.

"I saw him try to kiss ye," he said indignantly.

"Have you never tried to kiss a girl?" Mavis had asked quietly,
and Jason reddened.

"Yes," he admitted reluctantly.

"And did she always let ye?"

"Well, no--not--"

"Very well, then," Mavis snapped, and she flaunted away.

It was different now, the matter was more serious, and now they
were cousins and Hawns. Blood spoke to blood and answered to
blood, and when at the end Mavis broke into a fit of shame and
tears, a burst of light opened in Jason's brain and his heart
raged not only for Mavis, but for himself. Gray had been ashamed
to go to that dance with Mavis, and Marjorie had been ashamed to
go with him--there was a chasm, and with every word that Mavis
spoke the wider that chasm yawned.

"Oh, I know it," she sobbed. "I couldn't believe it at first, but
I know it now"--she began to drop back into her old speech--"they
come down in the mountains, and grandpap was nice to 'em, and when
we come up here they was nice to us. But down thar and up here we
was just queer and funny to 'em--an' we're that way yit. They're
good-hearted an' they'd do anything in the world fer us, but we
ain't their kind an' they ain't ourn. They knowed it and we
didn't--but I know it now."

So that was the reason Marjorie had hesitated when Jason asked her
to go to the dance with him.

"Then why did she go?" he burst out. He had mentioned no name
even, but Mavis had been following his thoughts.

"Any gal 'ud do that fer fun," she answered, "an' to git even with
Gray."

"Why do you reckon--"

"That don't make no difference--she wants to git even with me,
too."

Jason wheeled sharply, but before his lips could open Mavis had
sprung to her feet.

"No, I hain't!" she cried hotly, and rushed into the house.

Jason sat on under the stars, brooding. There was no need for
another word between them. Alike they saw the incident and what it
meant; they felt alike, and alike both would act. A few minutes
later his mother came out on the porch.

"Whut's the matter with Mavis?"

"You'll have to ask her, mammy."

With a keen look at the boy, Martha Hawn went back into the house,
and Jason heard Steve's heavy tread behind him.

"I know whut the matter is," he drawled. "Thar hain't nothin' the
matter 'ceptin' that Mavis ain't the only fool in this hyeh
fambly."

Jason was furiously silent, and Steve walked chuckling to the
railing of the porch and spat over it through his teeth and
fingers. Then he looked up at the stars and yawned, and with his
mouth still open, went casually on:

"I seed Arch Hawn in town this mornin'. He says folks is a-hand-
grippin' down thar in the mountains right an' left. Thar's a truce
on betwixt the Hawns an' Honeycutts an' they're gittin' ready fer
the election together."

The lad did not turn his head nor did his lips open.

"These fellers up here tried to bust our county up into little
pieces once--an' do you know why? Bekase we was so LAWLESS." Steve
laughed sayagely. "They're gittin' wuss'n we air. They say we
stole the State fer that bag o' wind, Bryan, when we'd been votin'
the same way fer forty years. Now they're goin' to gag us an' tie
us up like a yearlin' calf. But folks in the mountains ain't a-
goin' to do much bawlin'--they're gittin' ready."

Still Jason refused to answer, but Steve saw that the lad's hands
and mouth were clenched.

"They're gittin' READY," he repeated, "an' I'll be thar."




XXIII

But the sun of election day went down and a breath of relief
passed like a south wind over the land. Perhaps it was the
universal recognition of the universal danger that prevented an
outbreak, but the morning after found both parties charging fraud,
claiming victory, and deadlocked like two savage armies in the
crisis of actual battle. For a fortnight each went on claiming the
victory. In one mountain county the autocrat's local triumvirate
was surrounded by five hundred men, while it was making its count;
in another there were three thousand determined onlookers; and
still another mountain triumvirate was visited by nearly all the
male inhabitants of the county who rode in on horseback and waited
silently and threateningly in the court-house square.

At the capital the arsenal was under a picked guard and the
autocrat was said to be preparing for a resort to arms. A few
mountaineers were seen drifting about the streets, and the State
offices--"just a-lookin' aroun' to see if their votes was a-goin'
to be counted in or not."

At the end of the fortnight the autocrat claimed the fight by one
vote, but three days before Thanksgiving Day two of the State
triumvirate declared for the Republican from the Pennyroyal--and
resigned.

"Great Caesar!" shouted Colonel Pendleton. "Can the one that's
left appoint his OWN board?"

Being for the autocrat, he not only could but did--for the
autocrat's work was only begun. The contest was yet to come.

Meanwhile the great game was at hand. The fight for the
championship lay now between the State University and old
Transylvania, and, amid a forest of waving flags and a frenzied
storm from human throats, was fought out desperately on the day
that the nation sets aside for peace, prayer, and thanksgiving.
Every atom of resentment, indignation, rebellion, ambition that
was stored up in Jason went into that fight. It seemed to John
Burnham and to Mavis and Marjorie that their team was made up of
just one black head and one yellow one, for everywhere over the
field and all the time, like a ball of fire and its shadow, those
two heads darted, and, when they came together, they were the last
to go down in the crowd of writhing bodies and the first to leap
into view again--and always with the ball nearer the enemy's goal.
Behind that goal each head darted once, and by just those two
goals was the game won. Gray was the hero he always was; Jason was
the coming idol, and both were borne off the field on the
shoulders of a crowd that was hoarse with shouting triumph and
weeping tears of joy. And on that triumphal way Jason swerved his
eyes from Marjorie and Mavis swerved hers from Gray. There was no
sleep for Jason that night, but the next night the fierce tension
of mind and muscle relaxed and he slept long and hard; and Sunday
morning found him out in the warm sunlight of the autumn fields,
seated on a fence rail--alone.

He had left the smoke cloud of the town behind him and walked
aimlessly afield, except to take the turnpike that led the
opposite way from Mavis and Marjorie and John Burnham and Gray,
for he wanted to be alone. Now, perched in the crotch of a stake-
and-ridered fence, he was calmly, searchingly, unsparingly taking
stock with himself.

In the first place the training-table was no more, and he must go
back to delivering morning papers. With foot-ball, with diversions
in college and in the country, he had lost much time and he must
make that up. The political turmoil had kept his mind from his
books and for a while Marjorie had taken it away from them
altogether. He had come to college none too well prepared, and
already John Burnham had given him one kindly warning; but so
supreme was his self-confidence that he had smiled at the
geologist and to himself. Now he frowningly wondered if he had not
lost his head and made a fool of himself; and a host of worries
and suspicions attacked him so sharply and suddenly that, before
he knew what he was doing, he had leaped panic-stricken from the
fence and at a half-trot was striking back across the fields in a
bee-line for his room and his books. And night and day thereafter
he stuck to them.

Meanwhile the struggle was going on at the capital, and by the
light of every dawn the boy drank in every detail of it from the
morning paper that was literally his daily bread. Two weeks after
the big game, the man from the Pennyroyal was installed as
governor. The picked guard at the arsenal was reinforced. The
contesting autocrat was said to have stored arms in the
penitentiary, a gray, high-walled fortress within a stone's throw
of the governor's mansion, for the Democratic warden thereof was
his loyal henchman. The first rumor of the coming of the
mountaineers spread, and the capital began to fill with the ward
heelers and bad men of the autocrat.

A week passed, there was no filing of a protest, a pall of
suspense hung over the land like a black cloud, and under it there
was no more restless spirit than Jason, who had retreated into his
own soul as though it were a fortress of his hills. No more was he
seen at any social gathering--not even at the gymnasium, for the
delivery of his morning papers gave him all the exercise that he
needed and more. His hard work and short hours of sleep began to
tell on him. Sometimes the printed page of his book would swim
before his eyes and his brain go panic-stricken. He grew pale,
thin, haggard, and worn, and Marjorie saw him only when he was
silently, swiftly striding from dormitory to class-room and back
again--grim, reticent, and non-approachable. When Christmas
approached he would not promise to go to Gray's nor to John
Burnham's, and he rarely went now even to his mother. In Mavis
Hawn, Gray found the same mystifying change, for when the morbidly
sensitive spirit of the mountaineer is wounded, healing is slow
and cure difficult. One day, however, each pair met. Passing the
mouth of the lane, Gray saw Mavis walking slowly along it homeward
and he rode after her. She turned when she heard his horse behind
her, her chin lifted, and her dark sullen eyes looked into his
with a stark, direct simplicity that left him with his lips half
open--confused and speechless. And gently, at last:

"What's the matter, Mavis?"

Still she looked, unquestioning, uncompromising, and turned
without answer and went slowly on home while the boy sat his horse
and looked after her until she climbed the porch of her cottage
and, without once turning her head, disappeared within. But Jason
at his meeting with Marjorie broke his grim reticence in spite of
himself. She had come upon him at sunset under the snowy willows
by the edge of the ice-locked pond. He had let the floodgates down
and she had been shaken and terrified by the torrent that rushed
from him. The girl shrank from his bitter denunciation of himself.
He had been a fool. The mid-year examinations would be a tragedy
for him, and he must go to the "kitchen" or leave college with
pride broken and in just disgrace. Fate had trapped him like a
rat. A grewsome oath had been put on him as a child and from it he
could never escape. He had been robbed of his birthright by his
own mother and the people of the Blue-grass, and Marjorie's people
were now robbing his of their national birthrights as well. The
boy did not say her people, but she knew that was what he meant,
and she looked so hurt that Jason spoke quickly his gratitude for
all the kindness that had been shown him. And when he started with
his gratitude to her, his memories got the better of him and he
stopped for a moment with hungry eyes, but seeing her
consternation over what might be coming next, he had ended with a
bitter smile at the further bitter proof she was giving him.

"But I understand--now," he said sternly to himself and sadly to
her, and he turned away without seeing the quiver of her mouth and
the starting of her tears.

Going to his mother's that afternoon, Jason found Mavis standing
by the fence, hardly less pale than the snow under her feet, and
looking into the sunset. She started when she heard the crunch of
his feet, and from the look of her face he knew that she thought
he might be some one else.

He saw that she had been crying, and as quickly she knew that the
boy was in a like agony of mind. There was only one swift look--a
mutual recognition of a mutual betrayal--but no word passed then
nor when they walked together back to the house, for race and
relationship made no word possible. Within the house Jason noticed
his mother's eyes fixed anxiously on him, and when Mavis was
clearing up in the kitchen after supper, she subtly shifted her
solicitude to the girl in order to draw some confession from her
son.

"Mavis wants to go back to the mountains."

The ruse worked, for Jason looked up quickly and then into the
fire while the mother waited.

"Sometimes I want to go back myself," he said wearily; "it's
gittin' too much for me here."

Martha Hawn looked at her husband stretched on the bed in a
drunken sleep and began to cry softly.

"It's al'ays been too much fer me," she sobbed. "I've al'ays
wanted to go back."

For the first time Jason began to think how lonely her life must
be, and, perhaps as the result of his own suffering, his heart
suddenly began to ache for her.

"Don't worry, mammy--I'll take ye back some day."

Mavis came back from the kitchen. Again she had been crying. Again
the same keen look passed between them and with only that look
Jason climbed the stairs to her room. As his eyes wandered about
the familiar touches the hand of civilization had added to the
bare little chamber it once was, he saw on the dresser of
varnished pine one touch of that hand that he had never noticed
before--the picture of Gray Pendleton. Evidently Mavis had
forgotten to put it away, and Jason looked at it curiously a
moment--the frank face, strong mouth, and winning smile--but he
never noticed that it was placed where she could see it when she
kneeled at her bedside, and never guessed that it was the last
earthly thing her eyes rested on before darkness closed about her,
and that the girl took its image upward with her even in her
prayers.




XXIV

The red dawn of the twentieth century was stealing over the frost-
white fields, and in the alien house of his fathers John Burnham
was watching it through his bedroom window. There had been little
sleep for him that New Year's night, and even now, when he went
back to bed, sleep would not come.

The first contest in the life of the State was going on at the
little capital. That capital was now an armed camp. The law-makers
there themselves were armed, divided, and men of each party were
marked by men of the other for the first shot when the crisis
should come. There was a Democratic conspiracy to defraud--a
Republican conspiracy to resist by force to the death. Even in the
placing of the ballots in the box for the drawing of the contest
board, fraud was openly charged, and even then pistols almost
leaped from their holsters. Republicans whose seats were contested
would be unseated and the autocrat's triumph would thus be sure--
that was the plan wrought out by his inflexible will and iron
hand. The governor from the Pennyroyal swore he would leave his
post only on a stretcher. Disfranchisement was on the very eve of
taking place, liberty was at stake, and Kentuckians unless aroused
to action would be a free people no longer. The Republican cry was
that the autocrat had created his election triumvirate, had stolen
his nomination, tried to steal his election, and was now trying to
steal the governorship. There was even a meeting in the big town
of the State to determine openly whether there should be
resistance to him by force. Two men from the mountains had met in
the lobby of the Capitol Hotel and a few moments later, under the
drifting powder smoke, two men lay wounded and three lay dead. The
quarrel was personal, it was said, but the dial-hand of the times
was left pointing with sinister prophecy at tragedy yet to come.
And in the dark of the first moon of that century the shadowy
hillsmen were getting ready to swoop down. And it was the dawn of
the twentieth century of the Christian era that Burnham watched,
the dawn of the one hundred and twenty-fifth year of the nation's
life--of the one hundred and seventh year of statehood for
Kentucky. And thinking of the onward sweep of the world, of the
nation, North, East, West, and South, the backward staggering of
his own loved State tugged sorely at his heart.

In chapel next morning John Burnham made another little talk--
chiefly to the young men of the Blue-grass among whom this tragedy
was taking place. No inheritance in American life was better than
theirs, he told them--no better ideals in the relations of family,
State, and nation. But the State was sick now with many ills and
it was coming to trial now before the judgment of the watching
world. If it stood the crucial fire, it would be the part of all
the youth before him to maintain and even better the manhood that
should come through unscathed. And if it failed, God forbid, it
would be for them to heal, to mend, to upbuild, and, undaunted,
push on and upward again. And as at the opening of the session he
saw again, lifted to him with peculiar intenseness, the faces of
Marjorie and Gray Pendleton, and of Mavis and Jason Hawn--only now
Gray looked deeply serious and Jason sullen and defiant. And at
Mavis, Marjorie did not turn this time to smile. Nor was there any
furtive look from any one of the four to any other, when the
students rose, though each pair of cousins drifted together on the
way out, and in pairs went on their separate ways.

The truth was that Marjorie and Gray were none too happy over the
recent turn of affairs. Both were too fine, too generous, to hurt
the feelings of others except with pain to themselves. They knew
Mavis and Jason were hurt but, hardly realizing that between the
four the frank democracy of childhood was gone, they hardly knew
how and how deeply. Both were mystified, greatly disturbed, drawn
more than ever by the proud withdrawal of the mountain boy and
girl, and both were anxious to make amends. More than once Gray
came near riding over to Steve Hawn's and trying once more to
understand and if possible to explain and restore good feeling,
but the memory of his rebuff from Mavis and the unapproachable
quality in Jason made him hesitate. Naturally with Marjorie this
state of mind was worse, because of the brink of Jason's
confession for which she knew she was much to blame, and because
of the closer past between them. Once only she saw him striding
the fields, and though she pulled in her horse to watch him, Jason
did not know; and once he came to her when he did not know that
she knew. It was the night before the mid-year examinations and
Marjorie, in spite of that fact, had gone to a dance and, because
of it, was spending the night in town with a friend. The two girls
had got home a little before three in the morning, and Marjorie
had put out her light and gone to bed but, being sleepless, had
risen and sat dreaming before the fire. The extraordinary
whiteness of the moonlight had drawn her to the window when she
rose again, and she stood there like a tall lily, looking silent
sympathy to the sufferers in the bitter cold outside. She put one
bare arm on the sill of the closed window and looked down at the
snow-crystals hardly less brilliant under the moon than they would
be under the first sun-rays next morning, looked through the snow-
laden branches of the trees, over the white house-tops, and out to
the still white fields--the white world within her answering the
white world without as in a dream. She was thinking of Jason, as
she had been thinking for days, for she could not get the boy out
of her mind. All night at the dance she had been thinking of him,
and when between the stone pillars of the gateway a figure
appeared without overcoat, hands in pockets and a bundle of
something under one arm, the hand on the window-sill dropped till
it clutched her heart at the strangeness of it, for her watching
eyes saw plain in the moonlight the drawn white face of Jason
Hawn. He tossed something on the porch and her tears came when she
realized what it meant. Then he drew a letter out of his pocket,
hesitated, turned, turned again, tossed it too upon the porch, and
wearily crunched out through the gate. The girl whirled for her
dressing-gown and slippers, and slipped downstairs to the door,
for her instinct told her the letter was for her, and a few
minutes later she was reading it by the light of the fire.

"I know where you are," the boy had written. "Don't worry, but I
want to tell you that I take back that promise I made in the road
that day."

John Burnham's examination was first for Jason that morning, and
when the boy came into the recitation-room the school-master was
shocked by the tumult in his face. He saw the lad bend listlessly
over his papers and look helplessly up and around--worn, brain-
fagged, and half wild--saw him rise suddenly and hurriedly, and
nodded him an excuse before he could ask for it, thinking the boy
had suddenly gone ill. When he did not come back Burnham got
uneasy, and after an hour he called another member of the faculty
to take his place and hurried out. As he went down the corridor a
figure detached itself from a group of girls and flew after him.
He felt his arm caught tightly and he turned to find Marjorie,
white, with trembling lips, but struggling to be calm:

"Where is Jason?" Burnham recovered quickly.

"Why, I don't believe he is very well," he said with gentle
carelessness. "I'm going over now to see him. I'll be back in a
minute." Wondering and more than ever uneasy, Burnham went on,
while the girl unconsciously followed him to the door, looking
after him and almost on the point of wringing her hands. In the
boy's room Burnham found an old dress-suit case packed and placed
on the study table. On it was a pencil-scribbled note to one of
his room-mates:

"I'll send for this later," it read, and that was all.

Jason was gone.




XXV

The little capital sits at the feet of hills on the edge of the
Blue-grass, for the Kentucky River that sweeps past it has brought
down those hills from the majestic highlands of the Cumberland.
The great railroad of the State had to bore through rock to reach
the place and clangs impudently through it along the main street.
For many years other sections of the State fought to wrest this
fountain-head of law and government from its moorings and
transplant it to the heart of the Blue-grass, or to the big town
on the Ohio, because, as one claimant said:

"You had to climb a mountain, swim a river, or go through a hole
to get to it."

This geographical witticism cost the claimant his eternal
political life, and the capital clung to its water, its wooded
heaps of earth, and its hole in the gray wall. Not only hills did
the river bring down but birds, trees, and even mountain mists,
and from out the black mouth of that hole in the wall and into
those morning mists stole one day a long train and stopped before
the six great gray pillars of the historic old State-house. Out of
this train climbed a thousand men, with a thousand guns, and the
mists might have been the breath of the universal whisper:

"The mountaineers are here!"

Of their coming Jason had known for some time from Arch Hawn, and
just when they were to come he had learned from Steve. The boy had
not enough carfare even for the short ride of less than thirty
miles to the capital, so he rode as far as his money would carry
him and an hour before noon found him striding along on foot, his
revolver bulging at his hip, his dogged eyes on the frozen
turnpike. It was all over for him, he thought with the passionate
finality of youth--his college career with its ambitions and
dreams. He was sorry to disappoint Saint Hilda and John Burnham,
but his pride was broken and he was going back now to the people
and the life that he never should have left. He would find his
friends and kinsmen down there at the capital, and he would play
his part first in whatever they meant to do. Babe Honeycutt would
be there, and about Babe he had not forgotten his mother's
caution. He had taken his promise back from Marjorie merely to be
free to act in a double emergency, but Babe would be safe until he
himself was sure. Then he would tell his mother what he meant to
do, or after it was done, and as to what she would then say the
boy had hardly a passing wonder, so thin yet was the coating with
which civilization had veneered him. And yet the boy almost smiled
to himself to think how submerged that childhood oath was now in
the big new hatred that had grown within him for the man who was
threatening the political life of his people and his State--had
grown steadily since the morning before he had taken the train in
the mountains for college in the Blue-grass. On the way he had
stayed all night in a little mountain town in the foot-hills. He
had got up at dawn, but already, to escape the hot rays of an
August sun, mountaineers were coming in on horseback from miles
and miles around to hear the opening blast of the trumpet that was
to herald forth their wrongs. Under the trees and along the fences
they picketed their horses, thousands of them, and they played
simple games patiently, or patiently sat in the shade of pine and
cedar waiting, while now and then a band made havoc with the lazy
summer air. And there, that morning, Jason had learned from a red-
headed orator that "a vicious body of deformed Democrats and
degenerate Americans" had passed a law at the capital that would
rob the mountaineers of the rights that had been bought with the
blood of their forefathers in 1776, 1812, 1849, and 1865. Every
ear caught the emphasis on "rob" and "rights," the patient eye of
the throng grew instantly alert and keen and began to burn with a
sinister fire, while the ear of it heard further how, through that
law, their ancient Democratic enemies would throw THEIR votes out
of the ballot-box or count them as they pleased--even for
THEMSELVES. If there were three Democrats in a mountain county--
and the speaker had heard that in one county there was only one--
that county could under that law run every State and national
election to suit itself. Would the men of the mountains stand
that?--No! HE knew them--that orator did. HE knew that if the
spirit of liberty, that at Jamestown and Plymouth Rock started
blazing its way over a continent, lived unchanged anywhere, it
dwelt, however unenlightened and unenlightening, in a heart that
for an enemy was black with hate, red with revenge, though for the
stranger, white and kind; that in an eagle's isolation had kept
strung hard and fast to God, country, home; that ticking clock-
like for a century without hurry or pause was beginning to quicken
at last to the march-rhythm of the world--the heart of the
Southern hills. Now the prophecy from the flaming tongue of that
red-headed orator was coming to pass, and the heart of the
Kentucky hills was making answer.

It was just before noon when the boy reached the hill overlooking
the capital. He saw the gleam of the river that came down from the
mountains, and the home-thrill of it warmed him from head to foot.
Past the cemetery he went, with a glimpse of the statue of Daniel
Boone rising above the lesser dead. A little farther down was the
castle-like arsenal guarded by soldiers, and he looked at them
curiously, for they were the first his had ever seen. Below him
was the gray, gloomy bulk of the penitentiary, which was the State
building that he used to hear most of in the mountains. About the
railway station he saw men slouching whom he knew to belong to his
people, but no guns were now in sight, for the mountaineers had
checked them at the adjutant-general's office, and each wore a tag
for safe-keeping in his button-hole. Around the Greek portico of
the capitol building he saw more soldiers lounging, and near a big
fountain in the State-house yard was a Gatling-gun which looked
too little to do much harm. Everywhere were the stern, determined
faces of mountain men, walking the streets staring at things,
shuffling in and out of the buildings; and, through the iron
pickets of the yard fence, Jason saw one group cooking around a
camp-fire. A newspaper man was setting his camera for them and the
boy saw a big bearded fellow reach under his blanket. The
photographer grasped his instrument and came flying through the
iron gate, crying humorously, "Excuse ME!"

And then Jason ran into Steve Hawn, who looked at him with mild
wonder and, without a question, drawled simply:

"I kind o' thought you'd be along."

"Is grandpap here?" asked the boy, and Steve shook his head.

"He was too po'ly--but thar's more Hawns and Honeycutts in town
than you kin shake a stick at, an' they're walkin' round hyeh jes
like brothers. Hello, hyeh's one now!"

Jason turned to see big Babe Honeycutt, who, seeing him, paled a
little, smiled sheepishly, and, without speaking, moved uneasily
away. Whereat Steve laughed.

"Looks like Babe is kind o' skeered o' you fer SOME reason--Hello,
they're comin'!"

A group had gathered on the brick flagging between the frozen
fountain and the Greek portico of the old capitol, and every
slouching figure was moving toward it. Among them Jason saw Hawns
and Honeycutts--saw even his old enemy, "little Aaron" Honeycutt,
and he was not even surprised, for in a foot-ball game with one
college on the edge of the Blue-grass, he had met a pair of
envious, hostile eyes from the side-lines and he knew then that
little Aaron, too, had gone away to school. From the habit of long
hostility now, Jason swerved to the other edge of the crowd. From
the streets, the boarding-houses, the ancient Capitol Hotel, gray,
too, as a prison, from the State buildings in the yard,
mountaineers were surging forth and massing before the capitol
steps and around the big fountain. Already the Democrats had grown
hoarse with protest and epithet. It was an outrage for the
Republicans to bring down this "mountain army of
intimidationists"--and only God knew what they meant to do or
might do. The autocrat might justly and legally unseat a few
Republicans, to be sure, but one open belief was that these
"unkempt feudsmen and outlaws" would rush the legislative halls,
shoot down enough Democrats to turn the Republican minority, no
matter how small, into a majority big enough to enforce the
ballot-proven will of the people. Wild, pale, horrified faces
began to appear in the windows of the houses that bordered the
square and in the buildings within the yard--perhaps they were
going to do it now. Every soldier stiffened where he stood and
caught his gun tightly, and once more the militia colonel looked
yearningly at the Gatling-gun as helpless as a firecracker in the
midst of the crowd, and then imploringly to the adjutant-general,
who once again smiled and shook his head. If sinister in purpose,
that mountain army was certainly well drilled and under the
dominant spirit of some amazing leadership, for no sound, no
gesture, no movement came from it. And then Jason saw a pale, dark
young man, the secretary of state, himself a mountain man, rise
above the heads of the crowd and begin to speak.

"You are not here as revolutionists, criminals, or conspirators,
because you are loyal to government and law."

The words were big and puzzling to the untutored ears that heard
them, but a grim, enigmatical smile was soon playing over many a
rugged face.

"You are here under your God-given bill of rights to right your
wrongs through petitions to the legislators in whose hands you
placed your liberties and your laws. And to show how non-partisan
this meeting is, I nominate as chairman a distinguished Democrat
and ex-Confederate soldier."

And thereupon, before Jason's startled eyes, rose none other than
Colonel Pendleton, who silently swept the crowd with his eyes.

"I see from the faces before me that the legislators behind me
shall not overturn the will of the people," he said quietly but
sonorously, and then, like an invocation to the Deity, the dark
young mountaineer slowly read from the paper in his hand how they
were all peaceably assembled for the common good and the good of
the State to avert the peril hovering over its property, peace,
safety, and happiness. How they prayed for calmness, prudence,
wisdom; begged that the legislators should not suffer themselves
to be led into the temptation of partisan pride or party
predilection; besought them to remember that their own just powers
were loaned to them by the people at the polls, and that they must
decide the people's will and not their own political preference;
implored them not to hazard the subversion of that supreme law of
the land; and finally begged them to receive, and neither despise
nor spurn, their earnest petition, remonstrance, but preserve and
promote the safety and welfare and, above all, the honor of the
commonwealth committed to their keeping.

There was no applause, no murmur even of approval--stern faces had
only grown sterner, hard eyes harder, and that was all. Again the
mountain secretary of state rose, started to speak, and stopped,
looking over the upturned faces and toward the street behind them;
and something in his look made every man who saw it turn his head.
A whisper started on the outer edge of the crowd and ran backward,
and men began to tiptoe and crane their necks. A tall figure was
entering the iron gateway--and that whisper ran like a wind
through the mass, the whisper of a hated name. The autocrat was
coming. The mountaineers blocked his royal way to the speaker's
chair behind them, but he came straight on. His cold, strong,
crafty face was suddenly and fearlessly uplifted when he saw the
hostile crowd, and a half-scornful smile came to his straight thin
lips. A man behind him put a detaining hand on his shoulder, but
he shook it off impatiently. Almost imperceptibly men swerved this
way and that until there was an open way through them to the
State-house steps, and through that human lane, nearly every man
of which was at that moment longing to take his life, the autocrat
strode, meeting every pair of eyes with a sneer of cold defiance.
Behind him the lane closed; the crowd gasped at the daring of the
man and slowly melted away. The mountain secretary followed him
into the Senate with the resolutions he had just read, and the
autocrat, still with that icy smile, received and passed them--
into oblivion.

That night the mountain army disappeared as quickly as it had
come, on a special train through that hole in the wall and with a
farewell salute of gun and pistol into the drum-tight air of the
little capital. But a guard of two hundred stayed, quartered in
boarding-houses and the executive buildings, and hung about the
capitol with their arms handy, or loitered about the contest-board
meetings where the great "steal" was feared. So those meetings
adjourned to the city hall where the room was smaller, admission
more limited, and which was, as the Republicans claimed, a
Democratic arsenal. Next day the Republicans asked for three days
more for testimony and were given three hours by the autocrat. The
real fight was now on, every soul knew it, and the crisis was at
hand.

And next morning it came, when the same bold figure was taking the
same way to the capitol. A rifle cracked, a little puff of smoke
floated from a window of a State building, and on the brick
flagging the autocrat sank into a heap.

The legislature was at the moment in session. The minority in the
House was on edge for the next move. The secretary was droning on
and beating time, for the autocrat was late that morning, but he
was on his way. Cool, wary, steeled to act relentlessly at the
crucial moment, his hand was within reach of the prize, and the
play of that master-hand was on the eve of a master-stroke. Two
men hurried into the almost deserted square, the autocrat and his
body-guard, a man known in the annals of the State for his ready
use of knife or pistol. The rifle spoke and the autocrat bent
double, groaned harshly, clutched his right side, and fell to his
knees. Men picked him up, the building emptied, and all hurried
after the throng gathering around the wounded man. There was the
jostling of bodies, rushing of feet, the crowding of cursing men
to the common centre of excitement. A negro pushed against a white
man. The white man pulled his pistol, shot him dead, and hardly a
look was turned that way. The doors of the old hotel closed on the
wounded man, his friends went wild, and chaos followed. It was a
mountain trick, they cried, and a mountaineer had turned it. The
lawless hillsmen had come down and brought their cowardly custom
of ambush with them. The mountain secretary of state was speeding
away from the capitol at the moment the shot was fired, and that
was a favorite trick of alibi in the hills. That shot had come
from his window. Within ten minutes the terrified governor had
ringed every State building with bayonets and had telegraphed for
more militia. Nobody, not even the sheriff, could enter to search
for the assassin: what else could this mean but that there was a
conspiracy--that the governor himself knew of the plot to kill and
was protecting the slayer? About the State-house, even after the
soldiers had taken possession, stood rough-looking men, a wing of
the army of intimidation. A mob was forming at the hotel, and when
a company of soldiers was assembled to meet it, a dozen old
mountaineers, looking in the light of the camp-fires like the aged
paintings of pioneers on the State-house walls, fell silently and
solemnly in line with Winchesters and shot-guns. The autocrat's
bitterest enemies, though unregretting the deed, were outraged at
the way it was done, and the rush of sympathy in his wake could
hardly fail to achieve his purpose now. That night even, the
Democratic members tried to decide the contest in the autocrat's
favor. That night the governor adjourned the legislature to a
mountain town, and next morning the legislators found their
chambers closed. They tried to meet at hotel, city hall, court-
house; and solons and soldiers raced through the streets and never
could the solons win. But at nightfall they gathered secretly and
declared the autocrat governor of the commonwealth. And the wild
rumor was that the wounded man had passed before his name was
sealed by the legislative hand, and that the feet of a dead man
had been put into a living one's shoes. That night the news
flashed that one mountaineer as assassin and a mountain boy as
accomplice had been captured and were on the way to jail. And the
assassin was Steve and the boy none other than Jason Hawn.




XXVI

One officer pushed Jason up the steps of the car with one hand
clutched in the collar of the boy's coat. Steve Hawn followed,
handcuffed, and as the second officer put his foot on the first
step, Steve flashed around and brought both of his huge manacled
fists down on the man's head, knocking him senseless to the
ground.

"Git, Jason!" he yelled, but the boy had already got. Feeling the
clutch on his coat collar loosen suddenly, he had torn away and,
without looking back even to see what the crashing blow was that
he heard, leaped from the moving train into the darkness on the
other side of the train. One shot that went wild followed him, but
by the time Steve was subdued by the blow of a pistol butt and the
train was stopped, Jason was dashing through a gloomy woodland
with a speed that he had never equalled on a foot-ball field. On
top of a hill he stopped for a moment panting and turned to
listen. There were no sounds of pursuit, the roar of the train had
started again, and he saw the lights of it twinkling on toward the
capital. He knew they would have bloodhounds on his trail as soon
as possible; that every railway-station agent would have a
description of him and be on the lookout for him within a few
hours; and that his mother's house would be closely watched that
night: so, gathering his breath, he started in the long, steady
stride of his foot-ball training across the fields and, a fugitive
from justice, fled for the hills. The night was crisp, the moon
was not risen, and the frozen earth was slippery, but he did not
dare to take to the turnpike until he saw the lights of farm-
houses begin to disappear, and then he climbed the fence into the
road and sped swiftly on. Now and then he would have to leap out
of the road again and crouch close behind the fence when he heard
the rattle of some coming vehicle, but nothing overtook him, and
when at last he had the dark silent fields and the white line of
the turnpike all to himself he slowed into a swift walk. Before
midnight he saw the lights of his college town ahead of him and
again he took to the fields to circle about it and strike the road
again on the other side where it led on toward the mountains. But
always his eyes were turned leftward toward those town lights that
he was leaving perhaps forever and on beyond them to his mother's
home. He could see her still seated before the fire and staring
into it, newly worn and aged, and tearless; and he knew Mavis lay
sleepless and racked with fear in her little room. By this time
they all must have heard, and he wondered what John Burnham was
thinking, and Gray, and then with a stab at his heart he thought
of Marjorie. He wondered if she had got his good-by note--the
taking back of his promise to her. Well, it was all over now. The
lights fell behind him, the moon rose, and under it he saw again
the white line of the road. He was tired, but he put his weary
feet on the frozen surface and kept them moving steadily on. At
the first cock-crow, he passed the house where he had stayed all
night when he first rode to the Bluegrass on his old mare. A
little later lights began once more to twinkle from awakening
farm-houses. The moon paled and a whiter light began to steal over
the icy fields. Here was the place where he and the old mare had
seen for the first time a railroad train. Hunger began to gnaw
within him when he saw the smoke rising from a negro cabin down a
little lane, and he left the road and moved toward it. At the bars
which let into a little barnyard an old negro was milking a cow,
and when, at the boy's low cry of "Hello!" he rose to his feet, a
ruse carne to Jason quickly.

"Seen any chestnut hoss comin' along here?"

The old man shook his head.

"I jist got up, son."

"Well, he got away from me an' I reckon he's gone back toward
home. I started before breakfast--can I get a bite here?"

It looked suspicious--a white man asking a negro for food, and
Jason had learned enough in the Blue-grass to guess the reason for
the old darky's hesitation, for he added quickly:

"I don't want to walk all the way back to that white house where I
was goin' to get something to eat."

A few minutes later the boy was devouring cornbread and bacon so
ravenously that again he saw suspicion in the old darky's eyes,
and for that reason when he struck the turnpike again he turned
once more into the fields. The foot-hills were in sight now, and
from the top of a little wooded eminence he saw the beginning of
the dirt road and he almost shouted his gladness aloud. An hour
later he was on top of the hill whence he and his old mare had
looked first over the land of the Blue-grass, and there he turned
to look once more. The sun was up now and each frozen weed,
belated corn-stalk, and blade of grass caught its light, shattered
it into glittering bits, and knit them into a veil of bewildering
beauty for the face of the yet sleeping earth. The lad turned
again to the white breasts of his beloved hills. The nation's army
could never catch him when he was once among them--and now Jason
smiled.




XXVII

Back at the little capital, the Pennyroyal governor sat pat behind
thick walls and the muskets of a thousand men. The militia, too,
remained loyal, and the stacking up of ammunition in the adjutant-
general's office went merrily on. The dead autocrat was reverently
borne between two solid walls of living people to the little
cemetery on the high hill overlooking the river and with tribute
of tongue and pen was laid to rest, but beneath him the struggle
kept on. Mutual offers of compromise were mutually refused and the
dual government went on. The State-house was barred to the
legislators. To test his authority the governor issued a pardon--
the Democratic warden of the penitentiary refused to recognize it.
A company of soldiers came from his own Pennyroyal home and the
wing of the mountain army still hovered nigh. Meanwhile companies
of militia were drafted for service under the banner of the dead
autocrat. The governor ate and slept in the State-house--never did
he leave it. Once more a Democratic mob formed before the square
and the Gatling-gun dispersed it. The President at Washington
declined to interfere.

Then started the arrests. It was declared that the fatal shot came
from the window of the office of the pale, dark young secretary of
state, and that young mountaineer was taken--with a pardon from
the governor in his pocket; his brother, a captain of the State
guard, the ex-secretary of state, also a mountain man, and still
another mountaineer were indicted as accessories before the fact
and those indictments charged complicity to the Pennyroyal
governor himself. And three other men who were found in the
executive building were indicted for murder along with Steve and
Jason Hawn. Indeed, the Democrats were busy unearthing, as they
claimed, a gigantic Republican conspiracy. No less than one
hundred thousand dollars was offered as a reward for the
conviction of the murderers, and the Republican cry was that with
such a sum it was possible to convict even the innocent. In turn,
Liberty Leagues were even formed throughout the State to protect
the innocent, and lives and property were pledged to that end, but
the ex-secretary of state fled for refuge across the Ohio, and the
governor over there refused to give him up.

The Democrats held forth at the Capitol Hotel--the Republicans at
the executive building. The governor sent arms from the State
arsenal to his mountain capital. Two speakers were always on hand
in the Senate, and war talk once again became rife. There was a
heavy guard of soldiers at every point in the Capitol Square,
there were sentries at the governor's mansion, and the rumor was
that the militia would try to arrest the lieutenant-governor who
now was successor to the autocrat. So, to guard him, special
police were sworn in--police around the hotel, police in the
lobby, police patrolling the streets day and night; a system of
signals was formed to report suspicious movements of troops, and
more men were stationed at convenient windows and in dark
alleyways, armed with pistols, but with rifles and shot-guns close
at hand, while the police station was full of arms and ammunition.
To the courts it was at last agreed that the whole matter should
go, and there was panting peace for a while.

A curious pall overhung the college the morning of Jason's flight
for the hills. The awful news spread from lip to lip, hushing
shouts and quelling laughter. The stream of students moved into
the chapel with little noise--a larger stream than usual, for the
feeling was that there would be comment from the old president. A
common seriousness touched the face of every teacher on the
platform and deepened the seriousness of the young faces that
looked expectantly upward. In the centre of the freshman corner
one seat only was vacant, and that to John Burnham suggested the
emptiness of even more than death. Among the girls one chair, too,
yawned significantly, for Mavis was not there and the two places
might have been side by side, so close was the mute link between
them. But no word of Jason reached any curious ear, and only a
deeper feeling in the old president's voice when it was lifted,
and a deeper earnestness in his prayer that especial guidance
might now be granted the State in the crisis it was passing
through, showed that the thought of all hearts was working alike
in his. At noon the news of Jason's escape and flight spread like
fire through town and college--then news that bloodhounds were on
his trail, that the trail led to the hills, and that a quick
capture was certain. Before night the name of the boy was on the
lips of the State and for a day at least on the lips of the
nation.

The night before, John Burnham had gone down to the capital to see
Jason. All that day he had been hardly able to keep his mind on
book or student, all day he had kept recalling how often the boy
had asked him about this or that personage in history who had
sought to win liberty for his people by slaying with his own hand
some tyrant. He knew what part politics, the awful disregard of
human life, and the revengeful spirit of the mountains had played
in the death of the autocrat, but he knew also that if there was
in that mountain army that had gone to the capital the fearful,
mistaken, higher spirit of the fanatic it was in the breast of
Jason Hawn. He believed, however, that in the boy the spirit was
all there was, and that the deed must have been done by some hand
that had stolen the cloak of that spirit to conceal a malicious
purpose. Coming out of his class-room, he had seen Gray, whose
face showed that he was working with the same bewildering,
incredible problem. Outside Marjorie had halted him and
tremblingly told him of Jason's long-given promise and how he had
taken it back; and so as he drove to the country that afternoon
his faith in Jason was miserably shaken and a sickening fear for
the boy possessed him. He was hardly aware he had reached his own
gate, so lost in thought was he all the way, until his horse of
its own accord stopped in front of it, and then he urged it on
with a sudden purpose to go to Jason's mother. On top of the hill
he stopped again, for Marjorie's carriage was turning into the
lane that led to Martha Hawn's house. His kindly purpose had been
forestalled and with intense relief he turned back on his heart-
sick way homeward.

With Marjorie, too, it had been a sudden thought to go to Jason's
mother, but as she drew near the gate she grew apprehensive. She
had not been within the house often and then only for a moment to
wait for Mavis. She had always been half-fearful and ill at ease
with the sombre-faced woman who always searched her with big dark
eyes whose listlessness seemed but to veil mysteries and hidden
fires. As she was getting out of her carriage she saw Martha
Hawn's pale face at the window. She expected the door to be
opened, as she climbed the steps, but it was not, and when she
timidly knocked there was no bid to enter. She was even about to
turn away bewildered and indignant when the door did open and a
forbidding figure stood before her

"Mavis has gone down to see her pappy."

"Yes, I know--but I thought I'd come--"

She halted helplessly. She did not know that knocking was an
unessential formality in the hills; she did not realize that it
was her first friendly call on Martha Hawn; and curiously enough
the mountain woman became at that moment the quicker of the two.

"Come right in and set down," she said with a sudden change of
manner. "Rest yo' hat thar on the bed, won't you?"

The girl entered, her rosy face rising from her furs, and she
seemed to flood the poor little room with warmth and light and
make it poor indeed. She sat down and felt the deep black eyes
burning at her not unkindly now and with none of her own
embarrassment, for she had expected to find a woman bowed with
grief and she found her unshaken, stolid, calm. For the first time
she noticed that Jason had got his eyes and his brow from his
mother, and now her voice was an echo of his.

"They've got dogs atter my boy," she said simply.

That was all she said, but it started the girl's tears, for there
was not even resentment in the voice--only the resignation that
meant a life-long comradeship with sorrow. Marjorie had tried to
speak, but tears began to choke her and she turned her face to
hide them. She had come to comfort, but now she felt a hand
patting her on the shoulder. "Why, honey, you mustn't take on
that-a-way. Jason wouldn't want nobody to worry 'bout him--not fer
a minute. They'll never ketch him--never in this world. An' bless
yo' dear heart, honey, this ain't nothin'. Ever'thing 'll come out
all right. Why, I been used to killin' an' fightin' an' trouble
all my life. Jason hain't done nothin' he didn't think was right--
I know that--an' if hit was right I'm glad he done hit. I ain't so
shore 'bout Steve, but the Lord's been good to Steve fer holdin'
off his avengin' hand even this long. Hit'll all come out right--
don't you worry."

Half an hour later the girl on her way home found Colonel
Pendleton at his gate on horseback, apparently waiting for some
one, and, looking back through the carriage window, Marjorie saw
Gray galloping along behind her. She did not stop to speak with
the colonel, and a look of uneasy wonder crossed his face as she
drove by.

"What's the matter with Marjorie?" he asked when Gray drew nigh.
The boy shook his head worriedly.

"She's been to the Hawns," he said, and the colonel looked grave.
Twenty minutes later Mrs. Pendleton sat in her library, also
looking grave. Marjorie had told her where she had been and why
she had gone, and the mother, startled by the girl's wildness and
distress, had barely opened her lips in remonstrance when
Marjorie, in a whirlwind of tears and defiance, fled to her room.




XXVIII

On through the snowy mountains Jason went, keeping fearlessly now
to the open road, and telling the same story to the same question
that was always looked, even when not asked, by every soul with
whom he passed a word: he had gone to the capital when the
mountain people went down, he had been left behind, and, having no
money, was obliged to make his way back home on foot. Always he
was plied with questions, but news of the death of the autocrat
had not yet penetrated that far. Always he was gladly given food
and lodging, and sometimes his host or some horseman, overtaking
him, would take him up behind and save him many a weary mile.
Boldly he went until one morning he stood on the icy, glittering
crest of Pine Mountain and looked down a white wooded ravine to
the frozen Cumberland locked motionless in the valley below. He
could see the mouth of Hawn Branch and the mouth of Honeycutt
Creek--could see the spur, the neck of which once separated
Mavis's home from his--and with a joyful throb and a quickly
following pang he plunged down the ravine. Ahead of him was the
house of a Honeycutt and he had no fear, but as he swiftly
approached it along the river road, he saw two men, strangers,
appear on the porch and instinctively he scudded noiselessly
behind a great clump of evergreen rhododendron and lay flat to the
frozen earth. A moment later they rode by him at a walk and
talking in low, earnest tones.

"He's sure to come back here," said one, "and it won't be long
before some Honeycutt will give him away. This peace business
ain't skin-deep and a five-dollar bill will do the trick for us
and I'll find the right man in twenty-four hours."

The other man grunted an assent and the two rode on. Already they
were after Jason; they had guessed where he would go, and the boy
knew that what he had heard from these men was true. When he rose
now he kept out of the road and skirted his way along the white
flanks of the hills. Passing high up the spur above Hawn Branch,
he could see his grandfather's house. A horse was hitched to the
fence and a man was walking toward the porch and the lad wondered
if that stranger, too, could be on his trail. On upward he went
until just below him he could see the old circuit rider's cabin
under a snow-laden pine, and all up and down the Hawn Creek were
signs of activity from the outside world. Already he had watched
engineers mapping out the line of railway up the river. He had
seen the coming of the railroad darkies who lived in shacks like
cave-men, who were little above brutes and driven like slaves by
rough men in blue woollen shirts and high-laced boots. And now he
saw that old Morton Sanders' engineers had mapped out a line up
the creek of his fathers; that the darkies had graded it and their
wretched shacks were sagging drunkenly here and there from the
hill-sides. Around the ravine the boy curved toward the neck of
the dividing spur and half-unconsciously toward the little creek
where he had uncovered his big vein of coal, and there where with
hand, foot, and pick he had toiled so long was a black tunnel
boring into the very spot, with supporting columns of wood and a
great pile of coal at its gaping mouth. The robbery was under way
and the boy looked on with fierce eyes at the three begrimed and
coal-blackened darkies hugging a little fire near by. Cautiously
he backed away and slipped on down to a point where he could see
his mother's old home and Steve Hawn's, and there he almost
groaned. One was desolate, deserted, the door swinging from one
hinge, the chimney fallen, every paling of the fence gone and the
roof of the little barn caved in. Smoke was coming from Steve
Hawn's chimney, and in the porch were two or three slatternly
negro women. The boy knew the low, sinister meaning of their
presence on public works; and these blacks ate, slept, and plied
their trade in the home of Mavis Hawn! All the old rebellion and
rage of his early years came back to him and boiled the more
fiercely that his mother's home could never be hers, nor Mavis's
hers--for a twofold reason now--again. It was nearing noon and the
boy's hunger was a keen pain. Rapidly he went down the crest of
the spur until his grandfather's house was visible beneath him.
The horse at the front fence was gone, but as he slipped toward
the rear of the house he looked into the stable to make sure that
the horse was not there. And then a moment later he reached the
back porch and noiselessly opened the door--so noiselessly that
the old man sitting in front of the fire did not hear.

"Grandpap," he called tremulously.

The old man started and turned his great shaggy head. He said
nothing, but it seemed to the boy that from under his bushy brows
a flash of lightning was searching him from head to foot.

"Well," he rumbled scathingly, "you've been a-playin' hell, hain't
ye? I mought 'a' knowed whut would happen with Honeycutts a-
leadin' that gang. I tol' 'em to go up thar an' fight open--man to
man. They don't know nothin' but way-layin'. A thousand of 'em
shootin' one pore man in the back! Whut've I been tryin' to l'arn
ye since you was a baby? God knows I WANTED him killed. Why,"
thundered the old man savagely, "didn't YOU kill him face to
face?"

The boy's chin had gone up proudly while the old man talked and
now there was a lightning-flash in his own eyes.

"I tried to git him face to face fer three days. I knowed he had a
gun. I was aimin' to give him a chance fer his life. But seemed
like thar wasn't no other--"

"Stop!" thundered the old man again, "don't you say a word."

There was a loud "Hello" at the gate.

"Thar they air now," said the old man with a break in his voice,
and as he rose from his chair he said sternly: "An' stay right
where you air."

Through the window the boy saw the two horsemen who had passed him
in the road that morning. His eyes grew wild and he began to
tremble violently, but he stood still. The old man went to the
door.

"Hyeh he is, men," he shouted; "come in hyeh an' git him."

Then he turned to the boy.

"You air goin' back thar an' stand yore trial like a man."

The boy leaped wildly for the door, but the old man caught him and
with one hand held him as though he were a child, and thus the two
astonished detectives from the Blue-grass found them, and they
gaped at the mystery, for they knew the kinship of the two. One
pulled from his pocket a pair of handcuffs, and old Jason glared
at him with contempt.

"Don't you put them things on this boy--he's my grandson. An',
anyhow, ef you two full-grown men can't handle a boy without 'em
I'll go 'long with you myself."

Shamed, the man put the irons back in his pocket, and the other
one started to speak but stopped. The old man turned hospitably
toward his unwelcome guests.

"I reckon all o' ye want a bite to eat afore ye start. Mammy!"

The door to the kitchen opened and the aged grandmother halted
there, peering through brass-rimmed spectacles at her husband and
the two men, and catching sight last of little Jason standing in
the corner--trapped, white-faced, silent. Instantly she caught the
meaning of the scene, and with a little cry she tottered over to
the boy and putting both her hands on his breast began to pat him
gently. Then, still helplessly patting him with one hand, she
turned to her husband.

"You hain't goin' to give the boy up, Jason?" she asked
plaintively, and the old man swerved his face aside and nodded.

"Git up somethin' to eat, mammy," he said with rough gentleness,
and without another look or word she turned with her apron at her
eyes to the kitchen door. The old man glared out the window, the
boy sank on a chair at the corner of the fireplace, and in the
face of one of the men there was sympathy. The other, shifty of
eyes and crafty of face, spoke harshly.

"How much o' this reward do you want?"

Old Jason wheeled and the other man cried sternly:

"Shut up, you fool!"

"You lop-yeared rattlesnake!" began old Jason, and with a
contemptuous gesture dismissed him. "How much is that reward?"

The other man hesitated, and then with the thought that the fact
would soon be world-known answered promptly:

"For the capture and conviction of the murderer--one hundred
thousand dollars."

The old man gasped at the amazing sum; his face worked suddenly
with convulsive rage and calmed in a sudden way that made the
watching boy know that something was going to happen. Quietly old
Jason walked over to the fire and stood with his back to it. He
pulled out his pipe, filled it, and turned again to the mantel-
piece as though to reach for a match, but instead whipped two big
revolvers from it and wheeled.

"Hands up, men!" he said quietly. For a moment the two were
paralyzed, but the thick-set man, whose instincts were quicker,
obeyed slowly. The other one started to laugh.

"Up!" called the old man sternly, levelling one pistol, and the
laugh stopped, the man's face paled, and his hands flew high.

"Git their guns fer a minute, Jasie, an' put em' up hyeh on the
mantel. A hundred thousand dollars is a LEETLE too much."

The kitchen door opened and again the old woman peered through her
spectacles within.

"I knowed you wouldn't do it, pap," she said. "Dinner's ready--
come on in now, men, an' git a bite to eat."

The thin man's shifty eyes roved to his companion, who had almost
begun to smile and who muttered to himself as he rose:

"Well, by God!"

In utter silence the meal went through, except that the old man,
with his pistols crossed in his lap, kept urging his guests to the
full of their appetites. Jason ate like a wolf.

"Git a poke, mammy," said old Jason when the boy dropped knife and
fork, "an' fill it full o' victuals."

And still with a smile the thick-set man watched her gather food
from the table, put it in a paper sack, and hand it to the boy.

"Now git, Jasie--these men air goin' to stay hyeh with me fer'
bout an hour, an' then they can go atter ye ef they think they can
ketch ye."

With no word at all even of good-by, little Jason noiselessly
disappeared. A few minutes later, sitting in front of the fire
with his pistols still in his lap, old Jason Hawn explained:

"Fer a mule, a Winchester, and a hundred dollars I can git most
any man in this country killed. Fer a thousand I reckon I could
git hit proved that I had stole a side o' bacon or a hoss. Fer a
hundred thousand I could git hit proved that the President of
these United States killed that feller--an' human natur' is about
the same, I reckon, ever'whar. You don't git no grandson o' mine
when thar's a bunch o' greenbacks like that tied to the rope
that's a-pinin' to hang him."

An hour later he told his guests that they could be on their way,
though he'd be mighty glad to have 'em stay all night--and they
went, both chagrined, the thin one raging within but obedient and
respectful without, while the other, chuckling at his companion's
discomfiture and no little at his own, watched with a smile the
old fellow's method of speeding his parting guests.

"Git on yo' hosses, men," he suggested, and when the two stepped
from the porch he replaced his own guns on the mantel and followed
them with both of their guns in one hand and a Winchester in the
other. While they were mounting he walked to the corner of the
yard, laid both their pistols on the fence, walked back to the
porch, and stood there with his Winchester in the hollow of his
arm.

"Ride by thar, men, and git yo' guns; an' I reckon," he suggested
casually but convincingly, "when you pick 'em up you better not
EVEN LOOK BACK--NARY ONE O' YE."

"Can you beat it?" murmured the quiet man, while the other snarled
helplessly.

"An' when you git down to town you can tell the sheriff. He's a
Honeycutt, an' he won't come atter me, but I'll go down thar to
him an' pay my leetle fine."

Again the man said:

"Well, BY God!"

And as the two rode on, the old fellow's voice followed them:

"Come ag'in, men--I wish ye both well."

Two nights later St. Hilda, reading by her fire, heard a tap on
her window-pane, and, looking up, saw Jason's pale face outside.
She ran to the door, and the boy stumbled wearily toward the
threshold and stopped with a look of fear and piteous appeal. She
stretched out her arms to him, and, broken at last, the boy sank
at her feet, and, with his head in her lap, sobbed out of his
heart the truth.




XXIX

St. Hilda herself took Jason back to the Blue-grass, took him to
the gray frowning prison at the capital, and with streaming eyes
watched the iron gates close between them. Then she went home,
sent for John Burnham, and within an hour both started working for
the boy's freedom, for Jason must keep on with his studies, and,
with Steve Hawn in jail, must help his mother. Through Gray's
influence Colonel Pendleton, and through Marjorie's, Mrs.
Pendleton as well, offered to go sponsors for the boy's appearance
at his trial. The man from the Pennyroyal who sat in the
governor's chair, and even the successor to the autocrat who was
trying to pre-empt that seat, gave letters to help, and before any
prison pallor could touch the boy's sun-tanned face he was out in
the open air once more on bail. And when old Jason Hawn in the
mountains heard what had happened, he laughed.

"Well, I reckon if he's indicted only fer HELPIN' Steve, he ain't
in much danger, fer they can't git him onless they git Steve, an'
if thar IS one man no money can ketch--that man is slick Steve
Hawn. An' lemme tell ye: if the right feller was from the
mountains an' only mountain folks knows it, they hain't NUVER
goin' to find him out. Mebbe I was a leetle hasty--mebbe I was."

After one talk with John Burnham, the old president suggested that
Jason drop down into the "kitchen" and go on with his books, but
against this plan Jason shook his head. He was going to raise
Steve Hawn's tobacco crop on shares with Colonel Pendleton, he
would study at home, and John Burnham saw, moreover, that the boy
shrank from the ordeal of college associations and any further
hurt to his pride.

The pores of the earth were beginning to open now to the warm
breath of spring. Already Martha Hawn and Mavis had burnt brush on
the soil to kill the grass, and Jason ploughed the soil and
harrowed it with minute care, and sowed the seed broadcast by
hand. Within two weeks lettuce-like leaves were peeping through
the ground, and Jason and Mavis stretched canvas over the beds to
hold in the heat of day and hold off the frost of night. Three
weeks later came the first ploughing; then there was ploughing and
ploughing and ploughing again, and weeding and weeding and weeding
again. Just before ripening, the blooms came--blooms that were for
all the word like the blooms of purple rhododendron back in the
hills, and then the task of suckering began. Sometimes Mavis would
help and the mother started in to work like a man, but the boy had
absorbed from his environment its higher ideal of woman and, all
he could, he kept both of them out of the tobacco field. This made
it all the harder for him and there was no let-up to his toil.
Just the same, Jason put in every spare moment on his books, and
in Mavis's little room, which had been turned over to him, his
lamp burned far into every night. When he struck a knotty point or
problem, he would walk over to John Burnham's for help, or the
school-master, as he went to and fro from his college duties,
would find the boy on a fence by the roadside waiting with his
question for him. All the summer Jason toiled. When there was no
hard labor, always he had to fight the tobacco worms with spray,
and hand, and boot-heel, until the rich dark-green of the leaves
took on a furry, velvety sheen--until at ripening they turned to a
bright gold and were ready for the chisel-bladed, double-edged
knife with which the plants are cut close to the ground. Then they
must be hung on upright tobacco sticks, stalks upward, to wilt
under the August sun, and then on to be housed in Colonel
Pendleton's great barns to dry within their slitted walls. Several
times during the summer Arch Hawn came by and looked at the boy's
work with keen, approving eye and in turn won a falling-off in
Jason's old prejudice against him; for Arch had built a church in
the county-seat in the mountains, had helped the county schools,
was making ready to help the mountain people fight unjust claims
to their lands, and, himself charged with helping to bring the
mountain army down to the capital, stood boldly ready to surrender
to the call of the law--he even meant to help Steve Hawn in his
trouble, for Steve, after an examining trial, had been remanded
back to prison without bail: and he was going to help Jason in his
trial, which would closely follow Steve's.

All summer, too, Gray and Marjorie were riding or driving past the
tobacco field, and Jason and Mavis, when they saw either or both
coming, would move to the end of the field that was farthest from
the turnpike and, turning their backs, would pretend not to see.
Sometimes the two mountaineers would be caught where avoidance was
impossible, and then Marjorie and Gray would call out cheerily and
with a smile--to get in return from the children of the soil a
grave, silent nod of the head and a grave, answering glance of the
eye--for neither knew the part the Blue-grass boy and girl had
played in the getting of Jason's freedom, until one late afternoon
of the closing summer days, for John Burnham had been asked to
keep the matter a secret. But Steve Hawn had learned from his
lawyer and had told his wife Martha when she came to visit him in
prison; and that late afternoon she was in the tobacco field when
Mavis and Jason moved to the other end and turned their backs as
Marjorie rode by on her way home and Gray an hour later galloped
past the other way.

"I reckon," she said quietly to Jason, "ef you knowed whut that
boy an' gal has been a-doin' fer ye, you wouldn't be a-actin'
that-a-way."

And then she explained and started for home. Both stood still--
silent and dumfounded--and only Mavis spoke at last.

"BOTH of us beholden to BOTH of 'em."

Jason made no answer, but bent to his work. When Mavis, too,
started for home he stayed behind without explanation, and when
she was out of sight he climbed the fence at the edge of the
woods, and sat there looking toward the sunset fading behind
Marjorie's home.




XXX

The tobacco was dry now, for the autumn was at hand. It must come
to case yet, then it must be stripped, the grades picked out, and
left then in bulk for sale. With all this Jason had nothing to do.
He had done good work on his books during the spring and autumn,
such good work that, with the old president's gladly given
permission, he was allowed a special examination which admitted
him with but one or two "conditions" into his own sophomore class.
Then was there the extraordinary spectacle of a college boy--
quiet, serious, toiling--making the slow way toward the humanities
under charge of murder and awaiting trial for his life. And that
course Jason Hawn followed with a dignity, reticence, and self-
effacement that won the steadily increasing respect of every
student and teacher within the college walls. A belief in his
innocence became wide-spread, and that coming trial began to be
regarded in time as a trial of the good name of the college
itself. A change of venue had been obtained and the trial was to
be held in the college town. It came in mid-December. Jason,
neatly dressed, sat beside his lawyer, and his mother, in black,
and Mavis sat quite near him. In the first row among the
spectators were Gray and Marjorie and Colonel Pendleton. Behind
them was John Burnham, and about him and behind him were several
other professors, while the room was crowded with students. The
boy was pale when he went to the witness-chair, and the court-room
was as still as a wooded ravine in the hills when he began to tell
his story, which apparently no other soul than his own lawyer had
ever heard; indeed it was soon apparent that even he had never
heard it all.

"I went down there to kill him," the boy said calmly, though his
eyes were two deep points of fire--so calmly, indeed, that as one
man the audience gasped audibly--"an' I reckon all of ye know why.
My grandpap al'ays told me the meanest thing a man could do was to
shoot another man in the back. I tried for three days to git face
to face with him. I knowed he had a gun all the time, an' I meant
to give him a fair chance fer his life. That mornin' I heard
through the walls of the boardin'-house I was in--an' I didn't
know who was doin' the talkin'--that the man was goin' to be
waylaid right then an' I run over to that ex-ec-u-tive building to
reach Steve Hawn an' keep HIM anyways from doin' the shootin'. I
heard the shots soon as I got inside the door, and purty soon I
met Steve runnin' down the stairs. 'I didn't do it!' Steve says,
'but any feller from the mountains better git away from HERE.' We
run out through the yard an' got into Steve's buggy an' travelled
the road till we was ketched--an' that's all I know."

And that was all. No other fact, no other admission, no other
statement could the rigid, bitter cross-examination bring from the
lad's lips than just those words; and those words alone the jury
carried to their room. Nor were they long gone. Back they came,
and again the court-room was as the holding in of one painful
breath, and then tears started in the eyes of the woman in black,
the mountain girl by her side, and in Marjorie's, and the court-
room broke into stifled cheer, for the words all heard were:

"Not guilty."

At the gate of the college a crowd of students, led by Gray
Pendleton, awaited Jason. The boy was borne aloft on their
shoulders through the yard amid the cheers of boys and girls--was
borne on into the gymnasium, and before the lad could quite
realize what was going on he heard himself cheered as captain of
the foot-ball team for the next year, and was once more borne out,
around and aloft again--while John Burnham with a full heart, and
Mavis and Marjorie with wet eyes, looked smilingly on. A week
later Arch Hawn persuaded the boy to allow him to lend him money
to complete his course and a week later still it was Christmas
again. Christmas night there was a glad gathering at Colonel
Pendleton's. Even St. Hilda was there, and she and John Burnham,
and Colonel Pendleton and Mrs. Pendleton, Gray and Mavis, and
Marjorie and Jason, danced the Virginia reel together, and all the
stars were stars of Bethlehem to Mavis and Jason Hawn as they
crunched across the frozen fields at dawn for home.




XXXI

The pale, dark young secretary of state had fled from the capital
in a soldier's uniform and had been captured with a pardon in his
pocket from the Pennyroyal governor, which the authorities refused
to honor. The mountain ex-secretary of state had fled across the
Ohio, to live there an exile. The governor from the Pennyroyal had
carried his case to the supreme court of the land, had lost, and
he, too, amid the condemnation of friends and foes, had crossed
the same yellow river to the protection of the same Northern
State. With his flight the troubles at the capital had passed the
acute crisis and settled down into a long, wearisome struggle to
convict the assassins of the autocrat. During the year the young
secretary of state had been once condemned to death, once to life
imprisonment, and was now risking the noose again on a third
trial. Jason Hawn's testimony at his own trial, it was thought,
would help Steve Hawn. Indeed, another mountaineer, Hiram
Honeycutt, an uncle to little Aaron, was, it seemed, in greater
danger than Steve, but the suspect in most peril was an auditor's
clerk from the Blue-grass; so it looked as though old Jason's
prophecy--that the real murderer, if a mountaineer, would never be
convicted--might yet come true. The autocrat was living on in the
hearts of his followers as a martyr to the cause of the people,
and a granite shaft was to rise in the little cemetery on the
river bluff to commemorate his deeds and his name. His death had
gratified the blood-lust of his foes, his young Democratic
successor would amend that "infamous election law" and was plainly
striving for a just administration, and so bitterness began
swiftly to abate, tolerance grew rapidly, and the State went
earnestly on trying to cure its political ills. And yet even while
John Burnham and his like were congratulating themselves that cool
heads and strong hands had averted civil war, checked further
violence, and left all questions to the law and the courts, the
economic poison that tobacco had been spreading through the land
began to shake the commonwealth with a new fever: for not liberty
but daily bread was the farmer's question now.

The Big Trust had cut out competitive buyers, cut down prices to
the cost of production, and put up the price of the tobacco bag
and the plug. So that the farmer must smoke and chew his own
tobacco, or sell it at a loss and buy it back again at whatever
price the trust chose to charge him. Already along the southern
border of the State the farmers had organized for mutual
protection and the members had agreed to plant only half the usual
acreage. When the non-members planted more than ever, masked men
descended upon them at night and put the raiser to the whip and
his barn to the torch. It seemed as though the passions of men,
aroused by the political troubles and getting no vent in action,
welcomed this new outlet, and already the night-riding of ku-klux
and toll gate days was having a new and easy birth. And these
sinister forces were sweeping slowly toward the Blue-grass. Thus
the injection of this new problem brought a swift subsidence of
politics in the popular mind. It caused a swift withdrawal of the
political background from the lives of the Pendletons and dwarfed
its importance for the time in the lives of the Hawns, for again
the following spring Colonel Pendleton, in the teeth of the coming
storm, raised tobacco, and so, for his mother, did Jason Hawn.

In the mountains, meanwhile, the trend, contrariwise, was upward--
all upward. Railroads were building, mines were opening, great
trees were falling for timber. Even the Hawns and Honeycutts were
too busy for an actual renewal of the feud, though the casual
traveller was amazed to discover slowly how bitter the enmity
still was. But the feud in no way checked the growth going on in
all ways, nor was that growth all material. More schools than St.
Hilda's had come into the hills from the outside and were doing
hardly less effective work. County schools, too, were increasing
in number and in strength. More and more mountain boys and girls
were each year going away to college, bringing back the fruits of
their work and planting the seeds of them at home. The log cabin
was rapidly disappearing, the frame cottages were being built with
more neatness and taste, and garish colors were becoming things of
the past. Indeed, a quick uplift through all the mountains was
perceptible to any observant eye that had known and knew now the
hills. To the law-makers at the capital and to the men of law and
business in the Blue-grass, that change was plain when they came
into conflict with the lawyers and bankers and merchants of the
highlands, for they found this new hillsman shrewd, resourceful,
quick-witted, tenacious, and strong, and John Burnham began to
wonder if the vigorous type of Kentuckian that seemed passing in
the Blue-grass might not be coming to a new birth in the hills. He
smiled grimly that following spring when he heard that a company
of mountain militia from a county that was notorious for a
desperate feud had been sent down to keep order in the tobacco
lowlands; he kept on smiling every time he heard that a
mountaineer had sold his coal lands and moved down to buy some
blue-grass farm, and wondering how far this peaceful
dispossessment might go in time; and whether a fusion of these
social extremes of civilization might not be in the end for the
best good of the State. And he knew that the basis of his every
speculation about the fortunes of the State rested on the
intertwining hand of fate in the lives of Marjorie and Gray
Pendleton and Mavis and Jason Hawn.




XXXII

In June, Gray Pendleton closed his college career as he had gone
through it--like a meteor--and Jason went for the summer to the
mountains, while Mavis stayed with his mother, for again Steve
Hawn had been tried and convicted and returned to jail to await a
new trial. In the mountains Jason got employment at some mines
below the county-seat, and there he watched the incoming of the
real "furriners," Italians, "Hunks," and Slavs, and the uprising
of a mining town. He worked, too, in every capacity that was open
to him, and he kept his keen eyes and keen mind busy that he might
know as much as possible of the great machine that old Morton
Sanders would build and set to work on his mother's land. And more
than ever that summer he warmed to his uncle Arch Hawn for the
fight that Arch was making to protect native titles to mountain
lands--a fight that would help the achievement of the purpose
that, though faltering at last, was still deep in the boy's heart.

In the autumn, when he went back to college, Gray had set off to
some Northern college for a post-graduate course in engineering
and Marjorie had gone to some fashionable school in the great city
of the nation for the finishing touches of hats and gowns,
painting and music, and for a wider knowledge of her own social
world. That autumn the tobacco trouble was already pointing to a
crisis for Colonel Pendleton. The whip and lash and the
destruction of seed-beds had been ineffective, and as the trust
had got control of the trade, the raisers must now get control of
the raw leaf in the field and in the barn. That autumn Jason
himself drifted into a mass-meeting of growers in the court-house
one day on his way home from college. An orator from the Far West
with a shock of black hair and gloomy black brows and eyes urged a
general and permanent alliance of the tillers of the soil. An old
white-bearded man with cane and spectacles and a heavy goatee
working under a chew of tobacco tremulously pleaded for a pooling
of the crops. The answer was that all would not pool, and the
question was how to get all in. A great-shouldered, red-faced man
and a bull-necked fellow with gray, fearless eyes, both from the
southern part of the State, openly urged the incendiary methods
that they were practising at home--the tearing up of tobacco-beds,
burning of barns, and the whipping of growers who refused to go
into the pool. And then Colonel Pendleton rose, his face as white
as his snowy shirt, and bowed courteously to the chairman.

"These gentlemen, I think, are beside themselves," he said
quietly, "and I must ask your permission to withdraw."

Jason followed him out to the court-house door and watched him,
erect as a soldier, march down the street, and he knew the trouble
that was in store for the old gentleman, for already he had heard
similar incendiary talk from the small farmers around his mother's
home.

The following June Marjorie and Gray Pendleton brought back
finishing touches of dress, manner, and atmosphere to the dazzled
envy of the less fortunate, in spite of the fact that both bore
their new claims to distinction with a modesty that would have
kept a stranger from knowing that they had ever been away from
home. Jason and Mavis were still at the old university when the
two arrived. To the mountaineers all four had once seemed almost
on the same level, such had once been the comradeship between
them, but now the old chasm seemed to yawn wider than ever between
them, and there was no time for it to close, if closing were
possible, for again Jason went back to the hills--this time to
Morton Sanders' opening mines--and, this time, Mavis went with him
to teach Hawns and Honeycutts in a summer school on the outskirts
of the little mining town. Again for Jason the summer was one of
unflagging work and learning--learning all he could, all the time.
He had discovered that to get his land back through the law, he
must prove that Arch Hawn or Colonel Pendleton not only must have
known about the big seam of coal, not only must have concealed the
fact of their knowledge from his mother and Steve Hawn, but, in
addition, must have told one or both, with the purpose of fraud,
that the land was worth no more than was visible to the eye in
timber and seams of coal that were known to all. That Colonel
Pendleton could have been guilty of such underhandedness was
absurd. Moreover, Jason's mother said that no such statement had
been made to her by either, though Steve had sworn readily that
Arch had said just that thing to him. But Jason began to believe
that Steve had lied, and Arch Hawn laughed when he heard of
Jason's investigations.

"Son, if you want that land back, or, ruther, the money it's
worth, you git right down to work, learn the business, and DIG it
back in another way."

And that was what Jason, half unconsciously, was doing. And yet,
with all the ambition that was in him, his interest in the work,
his love for the hills, his sense of duty to his people and his
wish to help them, the boy was sorely depressed that summer, for
the talons with which the fate of birth and environment clutched
him seemed to be tightening now again.

The trials of Steve Hawn and of Hiram Honeycutt for the death of
the autocrat were bringing back the old friction. Charges and
counter-charges of perjury among witnesses had freshened the old
enmity between the Hawns and the Honeycutts. Jason himself had
once to go back to the Blue-grass as witness, and when he returned
he learned that the charge whispered against him, particularly by
little Aaron, was that he had sworn falsely for Steve Hawn and
falsely against Hiram Honeycutt. Again Babe Honeycutt had come
back from the West and had quietly slipped out of the mountains
again, and Jason was led to believe it was on his account. So once
more the old oath began to weigh heavily upon him, for everybody
seemed to take it as much for granted that he would some day
fulfil that oath as that, after the dark of the moon, that moon
would rise again. Moreover, fate was inexorably pushing him and
little Aaron into the same channels that their fathers had
followed and putting on each the duty and responsibility of
leadership. And Jason, though shirking nothing, turned sick and
faint of heart and was glad when the summer neared its close.

Through all his vacation he and Mavis had seen but little of each
other, though Mavis lived with the old circuit rider and Jason in
a little shack on the spur above her, for the boy was on the night
shift and through most of the day was asleep. Moreover, both were
rather morose and brooding, each felt the deep trouble of the
other, and to it each paid the mutual respect of silence. How much
Mavis knew, Jason little guessed, though he was always vaguely
uneasy under the constant search of her dark eyes, and often he
would turn toward her expecting her to speak. But not until the
autumn was at hand and they were both making ready to go back to
the Blue-grass did she break her silence. The news had just
reached them that Steve Hawn had come clear at last and was at
home--and Mavis heard it with little elation and no comment. Next
day she announced calmly that she was not going back with Jason,
but would stay in the hills and go on with her school. Jason
stared questioningly, but she would not explain--she only became
more brooding and silent than ever, and only when they parted one
drowsy day in September was the thought within her betrayed:

"I reckon maybe you won't come back again."

Jason was startled. She knew then--knew his discontent, his new
longing to break the fetters of the hills, knew even that in his
dreams Marjorie's face was still shining like a star. "Course I'm
comin' back," he said, with a little return of his old boyish
roughness, but his eyes fell before hers as he turned hurriedly
away. He was rolling away from the hills, and his mind had gone
back to her seated with folded hands and unseeing eyes in the old
circuit rider's porch, dreaming, thinking--thinking, dreaming--
before he began fully to understand. He remembered his mother
telling him how unhappy Mavis had been the summer the two were
alone in the Blue-grass, and how she had kept away from Marjorie
and Gray and all to herself. He recalled Mavis telling him
bitterly how she had once overheard some girl student speak of her
as the daughter of a jail-bird. He began to see that she had
stayed in the Blue-grass that summer on his mother's account and
on her account would have gone back with him again. He knew that
there was no disloyalty to her father in her decision, for he knew
that she would stick to him, jail-bird or whatever he was, till
the end of time. But now neither her father nor Jason's mother
needed her. Through eyes that had gained a new vision in the Blue-
grass Mavis had long ago come to see herself as she was seen
there; and now to escape wounds that any malicious tongue could
inflict she would stay where the sins of fathers rested less
heavily on the innocent. There was, to be sure, good reason for
Jason to feel as Mavis felt--he had been a jail-bird himself--but
not to act like her--no. And then as he rolled along he began to
wonder what part Gray might be playing in her mind and heart. The
vision of her seated in the porch thinking--thinking--would not
leave him, and a pang of undefined remorse for leaving her behind
started within him. She, too, had outgrown his and her people as
he had--perhaps she was as rebellious against her fate as he was
against his own, but, unlike him, utterly helpless. And suddenly
the boy's remorse merged into a sympathetic terror for the
loneliness that was hers.




XXXIII

Down in the Blue-grass a handsome saddle-horse was hitched at the
stile in front of Colonel Pendleton's house and the front door was
open to the pale gold of the early sun. Upstairs Gray was packing
for his last year away from home, after which he too would go to
Morton Sanders' mines, on the land Jason's mother once had owned.
Below him his father sat at his desk with two columns of figures
before him, of assets and liabilities, and his face was gray and
his form seemed to have shrunk when he rose from his chair; but he
straightened up when he heard his boy's feet coming down the
stairway, forced a smile to his lips, and called to him cheerily.
Together they walked down to the stile.

"I'm going to drive into town this morning, dad," said Gray. "Can
I do anything for you?"

"No, son--nothing--except come back safe."

In the distance a tree crashed to the earth as the colonel was
climbing his horse, and a low groan came from his lips, but again
he quickly recovered himself at the boy's apprehensive cry.

"Nothing, son. I reckon I'm getting too fat to climb a horse--
good-by."

He turned and rode away, erect as a youth of twenty, and the lad
looked after him puzzled and alarmed. One glance his father had
turned toward the beautiful woodland that had at last been turned
over to axe and saw for the planting of tobacco, and it was almost
the last tree of that woodland that had just fallen. When the
first struck the earth two months before, the lad now recalled
hearing his father mutter:

"This is the meanest act of my life."

Suddenly now the boy knew that the act was done for him--and his
eyes filled as he looked after the retreating horseman upon whose
shoulders so much secret trouble weighed. And when the elder man
passed through the gate and started down the pike, those broad
shoulders began to droop, and the lad saw him ride out of sight
with his chin close to his breast. The boy started back to his
packing, but with a folded coat in his hand dropped in a chair by
the open window, looking out on the quick undoing in that woodland
of the Master's slow upbuilding for centuries, and he began to
recall how often during the past summer he had caught his father
brooding alone, or figuring at his desk, or had heard him pacing
the floor of his bedroom late at night; how frequently he had made
trips into town to see his lawyer, how often the lad had seen in
his mail, lately, envelopes stamped with the name of his bank;
and, above all, how often the old family doctor had driven out
from town, and though there was never a complaint, how failing had
been his father's health, and how he had aged. And suddenly Gray
sprang to his feet, ordered his buggy and started for town.

Along the edge of the bleeding stumps of noble trees the colonel
rode slowly, his thoughts falling and rising between his boy in
the room above and his columns of figures in the room below. The
sacrilege of destruction had started in his mind years before from
love of the one, but the actual deed had started under pressure of
the other, and now it looked as though each motive would be
thwarted, for the tobacco war was on in earnest now, and again the
poor old commonwealth was rent as by a forked tongue of lightning.
And, like the State, the colonel too was pitifully divided against
himself.

Already many Blue-grass farmers had pooled their crops against the
great tobacco trust--already they had decided that no tobacco at
all should be raised that coming year just when the colonel was
deepest in debt and could count only on his tobacco for relief.
And so the great-hearted gentleman must now go against his
neighbor, or go to destruction himself and carry with him his
beloved son. Toward noon he reined in on a little knoll above the
deserted house of the old general, the patriarchal head of the
family--who had passed not many years before--the rambling old
house, stuccoed with aged brown and still in the faithful clasp of
ancient vines. The old landmark had passed to Morton Sanders, and
on and about it the ruthless hand of progress was at work. The
atmosphere of careless, magnificent luxury was gone. The servants'
quarters, the big hen-house, the old stables with gables and
sunken roofs, the staggering fences, the old blacksmith-shop, the
wheelless windmill--all were rebuilt or torn away. Only the arched
gate-way under which only thoroughbreds could pass was left
untouched, for Sanders loved horses and the humor of that gate-
way, and the old spring-house with its green dripping walls. No
longer even were the forest trees in the big yard ragged and
storm-torn, but trimmed carefully, their wounds dressed, and
sturdy with a fresh lease on life; only the mournful cedars were
unchanged and still harping with every passing wind the same
requiem for the glory that was gone. With another groan the old
colonel turned his horse toward home--the home that but for the
slain woodlands would soon pass in that same way to house a
Sanders tenant or an overseer.

When he reached his front door he heard his boy whistling like a
happy lark in his room at the head of the stairway. The sounds
pierced him for one swift instant and then his generous heart was
glad for the careless joy of youth, and instead of going into his
office he slowly climbed the stairs. When he reached the door of
the boy's room, he saw two empty trunks, the clothes that had been
in them tossed in a whirlwind over bed and chair and floor, and
Gray hanging out of the window and shouting to a servant:

"Come up here, Tom, and help put my things back--I'm not going
away."

A joyous whoop from below answered:

"Yassuh, yassuh; my Gord, but I IS glad. Why, de colonel--"

Just then the boy heard a slight noise behind him and he turned to
see his father's arms stretched wide for him.

Gray remained firm. He would not waste another year. He had a good
start; he would go to the mines and begin work, and he could come
home when he pleased, if only over Sunday. So, as Mavis had
watched Jason leave to be with Marjorie in the Blue-grass, so
Marjorie now watched Gray leave to be with Mavis in the hills. And
between them John Burnham was again left wondering.




XXXIV

At sunset Gray Pendleton pushed his tired horse across the
Cumberland River and up into the county-seat of the Hawns and
Honeycutts. From the head of the main street two battered signs
caught his eye--Hawn Hotel and Honeycutt Inn--the one on the
right-hand side close at hand, and the other far down on the left,
and each on the corner of the street. Both had double balconies,
both were ramshackle and unpainted, and near each was a general
store, run now by a subleader of each faction--Hiram Honeycutt and
Shade Hawn--for old Jason and old Aaron, except in councils of war
and business, had retired into the more or less peaceful haven of
home and old age. Naturally the boy drew up and stopped before
Hawn Hotel, from the porch of which keen eyes scrutinized him with
curiosity and suspicion, and before he had finished his supper of
doughy biscuits, greasy bacon, and newly killed fried chicken, the
town knew but little less about his business there than he
himself. That night he asked many questions of Shade Hawn, the
proprietor, and all were answered freely, except where they bore
on the feud of half a century, and then Gray encountered a silence
that was puzzling but significant and deterrent. Next morning
everybody who spoke to him called him by name, and as he rode up
the river there was the look of recognition in every face he saw,
for the news of him had gone ahead the night before. At the mouth
of Hawn Creek, in a bend of the river, he came upon a schoolhouse
under a beech-tree on the side of a little hill; through the open
door he saw, amidst the bent heads of the pupils, the figure of a
young woman seated at a desk, and had he looked back when he
turned up the creek he would have seen her at the window, gazing
covertly after him with one hand against her heart. For Mavis
Hawn, too, had heard that Gray was come to the hills. All morning
she had been watching the open door-way, and yet when she saw him
pass she went pale and had to throw her head up sharply to get her
breath. Her hands trembled, she rose and went to the window, and
she did not realize what she was doing until she turned to meet
the surprised and curious eyes of one of the larger girls, who,
too, could see the passing stranger, and then the young school-
mistress flushed violently and turned to her seat. The girl was a
Honeycutt, and more than once that long, restless afternoon Mavis
met the same eyes searching her own and already looking mischief.
Slowly the long afternoon passed, school was dismissed, and Mavis,
with the circuit rider's old dog on guard at her heels, started
slowly up the creek with her eyes fixed on every bend of the road
she turned and on the crest of every little hill she climbed,
watching for Gray to come back. Once a horse that looked like the
one he rode and glimpsed through the bushes far ahead made her
heart beat violently and stopped her, poised for a leap into the
bushes, but it was only little Aaron Honeycutt, who lifted his
hat, flushed, and spoke gravely; and Mavis reached the old circuit
rider's gate, slipped around to the back porch and sat down, still
in a tumult that she could not calm. It was not long before she
heard a clear shout of "hello" at the gate, and she clenched her
chair with both hands, for the voice was Gray's. She heard the old
woman go to the door, heard her speak her surprise and hearty
welcome--heard Gray's approaching steps.

"Is Mavis here?" Gray asked.

"She ain't got back from school."

"Was that her school down there at the mouth of the creek?"

"Shore."

"Well, I wish I had known that."

Calmly and steadily then Mavis rose, and a moment later Gray saw
her in the door and his own heart leaped at the rich, grave beauty
of her. Gravely she shook hands, gravely looked full into his
eyes, without a question sat down with quiet hands folded in her
lap, and it was the boy who was embarrassed and talked. He would
live with the superintendent on the spur just above and he would
be a near neighbor. His father was not well. Marjorie was not
going away again, but would stay at home that winter. Mavis's
stepmother was well, and he had not seen Jason before he left--
they must have passed each other on the way. Since Mavis's father
was now at home, Jason would stay at the college, as he lost so
much time going to and fro. Gray was glad to get to work, he
already loved the mountains; but there had been so many changes he
hardly remembered the creek--how was Mavis's grandfather, old Mr.
Hawn? Mavis raised her eyes, but she was so long answering that
the old woman broke in:

"He's mighty peart fer sech a' old man, but he's a-breakin' fast
an' he ain't long fer this wuld." She spoke with the frank
satisfaction that, among country folks, the old take in ushering
their contemporaries through the portals, and Gray could hardly
help smiling. He rose to leave presently, and the old woman
pressed him to stay for supper; but Mavis's manner somehow
forbade, and the boy climbed back up the spur, wondering, ill at
ease, and almost shaken by the new beauty the girl seemed to have
taken on in the hills. For there she was at home. She had the
peace and serenity of them: the pink-flecked laurel was in her
cheeks, the white of the rhododendron was at the base of her full
round throat, and in her eyes were the sleepy shadows of deep
ravines. It might not be so lonely for him after all in his exile,
and the vision of the girl haunted Gray when he went to bed that
night and made him murmur and stir restlessly in his sleep.




XXXV

Once more, on his way for his last year at college, Jason Hawn had
stepped into the chill morning air at the railway junction, on the
edge of the Blue-grass. Again a faint light was showing in the
east, and cocks were crowing from a low sea of mist that lay
motionless over the land, but this time the darky porter reached
without hesitation for his bag and led him to the porch of the
hotel, where he sat waiting for breakfast. Once more at sunrise he
sped through the breaking mist and high over the yellow Kentucky
River, but there was no pang of homesickness when he looked down
upon it now. Again fields of grass and gram, grazing horses and
cattle, fences, houses, barns reeled past his window, and once
more Steve Hawn met him at the station in the same old rattletrap
buggy, and again stared at him long and hard.

"Ain't much like the leetle feller I met here three year ago--air
ye?"

Steve was unshaven and his stubbly, thick, black beard emphasized
the sickly touch of prison pallor that was still on his face. His
eyes had a new, wild, furtive look, and his mouth was cruel and
bitter. Again each side of the street was lined with big wagons
loaded with tobacco and covered with cotton cloth. Steve pointed
to them.

"Rickolect whut I tol' you about hell a-comin' about that
terbaccer?"

Jason nodded.

"Well, hit's come." His tone was ominous, personal, and disturbed
the boy.

"Look here, Steve," he said earnestly, "haven't you had enough
now? Ain't you goin' to settle down and behave yourself?"

The man's face took on the snarl of a vicious dog.

"No, by God!--I hain't. The trouble's on me right now. Colonel
Pendleton hain't treated me right--he cheated me out--"

Steve got no further; the boy turned squarely in the buggy and his
eyes blazed.

"That's a lie. I don't know anything about it, but I know it's a
lie."

Steve, too, turned furious, but he had gone too far, and had
counted too much on kinship, so he controlled himself, and with
vicious cunning whipped about.

"Well," he said in an injured tone, "I mought be mistaken. We'll
see--we'll see."

Jason had not asked about his mother, and he did not ask now, for
Steve's manner worried him and made him apprehensive. He answered
the man's questions about the mountains shortly, and with
diabolical keenness Steve began to probe old wounds.

"I reckon," he said sympathetically, "you hain't found no way yit
o' gittin' yo' land back?"

"No."

"Ner who shot yo' pap?"

"No."

"Well, I hear as how Colonel Pendleton owns a lot in that company
that's diggin' out yo' coal. Mebbe you might git it back from
him."

Jason made no answer, for his heart was sinking with every thought
of his mother and the further trouble Steve seemed bound to make.
Martha Hawn was standing in her porch with one hand above her eyes
when they drove into the mouth of the lane. She came down to the
gate, and Jason put his arms around her and kissed her; and when
he saw the tears start in her eyes he kissed her again while Steve
stared, surprised and uncomprehending. Again that afternoon Jason
wandered aimlessly into the blue-grass fields, and again his feet
led him to the knoll whence he could see the twin houses of the
Pendletons bathed in the yellow sunlight, and their own proud
atmosphere of untroubled calm. And again, even, he saw Marjorie
galloping across the fields, and while he knew the distressful
anxiety in one of the households, he little guessed the incipient
storm that imperious young woman was at that moment carrying
within her own breast from the other. For Marjorie missed Gray;
she was lonely and she was bored; she had heard that Jason had
been home several days; she was irritated that he had not been to
see her, nor had sent her any message, and just now what she was
going to do, she did not exactly know or care. Half an hour later
he saw her again, coming back at a gallop along the turnpike, and
seeing him, she pulled in and waved her whip. Jason took off his
hat, waved it in answer, and kept on, whereat imperious Marjorie
wheeled her horse through a gate into the next field and thundered
across it and up the slope toward him. Jason stood hat in hand--
embarrassed, irresolute, pale. When she pulled in, he walked
forward to take her outstretched gloved hand, and when he looked
up into her spirited face and challenging eyes, a great calm came
suddenly over him, and from it emerged his own dominant spirit
which the girl instantly felt. She had meant to tease, badger,
upbraid, domineer over him, but the volley of reproachful
questions that were on her petulant red lips dwindled lamely to
one:

"How's Mavis, Jason?"

"She's well as common."

"You didn't see Gray?"

"No."

"I got a letter from him yesterday. He's living right above Mavis.
He says she is more beautiful than ever, and he's already crazy
about his life down there--and the mountains."

"I'm mighty glad."

She turned to go, and the boy walked down the hill to open the
gate for her--and sidewise Marjorie scrutinized him. Jason had
grown taller, darker, his hair was longer, his clothes were worn
and rather shabby, the atmosphere of the hills still invested him,
and he was more like the Jason she had first seen, so that the
memories of childhood were awakened in the girl and she softened
toward him. When she passed through the gate and turned her horse
toward him again, the boy folded his arms over the gate, and his
sunburnt hands showed to Marjorie's eyes the ravages of hard work.

"Why haven't you been over to see me, Jason?" she asked gently.

"I just got back this mornin'."

"Why, Gray wrote you left home several days ago."

"I did--but I stopped on the way to visit some kinfolks."

"Oh. Well, aren't you coming? I'm lonesome, and I guess you will
be too--without Mavis."

"I won't have time to get lonesome."

The girl smiled.

"That's ungracious--but I want you to take the time."

The boy looked at her; since his trial he had hardly spoken to
her, and had rarely seen her. Somehow he had come to regard his
presence at Colonel Pendleton's the following Christmas night as
but a generous impulse on their part that was to end then and
there. He had kept away from Marjorie thereafter, and if he was
not to keep away now, he must make matters very clear.

"Maybe your mother won't like it," he said gravely. "I'm a jail-
bird."

"Don't, Jason," she said, shocked by his frankness; "you couldn't
help that. I want you to come."

Jason was reddening with embarrassment now, but he had to get out
what had been so long on his mind.

"I'm comin' once anyhow. I know what she did for me and I'm comin'
to thank her for doin' it."

Marjorie was surprised and again she smiled.

"Well, she won't like that, Jason," she said, and the boy, not
misunderstanding, smiled too.

"I'm comin'."

Marjorie turned her horse.

"I hope I'll be at home."

Her mood had turned to coquetry again. Jason had meant to tell her
that he knew she herself had been behind her mother's kindness
toward him, but a sudden delicacy forbade, and to her change of
mood he answered:

"You will be--when I come."

This was a new deftness for Jason, and a little flush of pleasure
came to the girl's cheeks and a little seriousness to her eyes.

"Well, you ARE mighty nice, Jason--good-by."

"Good-by," said the boy soberly.

At her own gate the girl turned to look back, but Jason was
striding across the fields. She turned again on the slope of the
hill but Jason was still striding on. She watched him until he had
disappeared, but he did not turn to look and her heart felt a
little hurt. She was very quiet that night, so quiet that she
caught a concerned look in her mother's eyes, and when she had
gone to her room her mother came in and found her in a stream of
moonlight at her window. And when Mrs. Pendleton silently kissed
her, she broke into tears.

"I'm lonely, mother," she sobbed; "I'm so lonely."

A week later Jason sat on the porch one night after supper and his
mother came to the doorway.

"I forgot to tell ye, Jason, that Marjorie Pendleton rid over here
the day you got here an' axed if you'd come home."

"I saw her down the pike that day," said Jason, not showing the
surprise he felt. Steve Hawn, coming around the corner of the
house, heard them both and on his face was a malicious grin.

"Down the pike," he repeated. "I seed ye both a-talkin', up thar
at the edge of the woods. She looked back at ye twice, but you
wouldn't take no notice. Now that Gray ain't hyeh I reckon you
mought--"

The boy's protest, hoarse and inarticulate, stopped Steve, who
dropped his bantering tone and turned serious.

"Now looky here, Jason, yo' uncle Arch has tol' me about Gray and
Mavis already up that in the mountains, an' I see what's comin'
down here fer you. You an' Gray ought to have more sense--gittin'
into such trouble--"

"Trouble!" cried the boy.

"Yes, I know," Steve answered. "Hit is funny fer me to be talkin'
about trouble. I was born to it, as the circuit rider says, as the
sparks fly upward. That ain't no hope fer me, but you--"

The boy rose impatiently but curiously shaken by such words and so
strange a tone from his step-father. He was still shaken when he
climbed to Mavis's room and was looking out of her window, and
that turned his thoughts to her and to Gray in the hills. What was
the trouble that Steve had already heard about Mavis and Gray, and
what the trouble at which Steve had hinted--for him? Once before
Steve had dropped a bit of news, also gathered from Arch Hawn,
that during the truce in the mountains little Aaron Honeycutt had
developed a wild passion for Mavis, but at that absurdity Jason
had only laughed. Still the customs of the Blue-grass and the
hills were widely divergent, and if Gray, only out of loneliness,
were much with Mavis, only one interpretation was possible to the
Hawns and Honeycutts, just as only one interpretation had been
possible for Steve with reference to Marjorie and himself, and
Steve's interpretation he contemptuously dismissed. His
grandfather might make trouble for Gray, or Gray and little Aaron
might clash. He would like to warn Gray, and yet even with that
wish in his mind a little flame of jealousy was already licking at
his heart, though already that heart was thumping at the bid of
Marjorie. Impatiently he began to wonder at the perverse
waywardness of his own soul, and without undressing he sat at the
window--restless, sleepless, and helpless against his warring
self--sat until the shadows of the night began to sweep after the
light of the sinking moon. When he rose finally, he thought he saw
a dim figure moving around the corner of the barn. He rubbed his
eyes to make sure, and then picking up his pistol he slipped down
the stairs and out the side door, taking care not to awaken his
mother and Steve. When he peered forth from the corner of the
house, Steve's chestnut gelding was outside the barn and somebody
was saddling him. Some negro doubtless was stealing him out for a
ride, as was not unusual in that land, and that negro Jason meant
to scare half to death. Noiselessly the boy reached the hen-house,
and when he peered around that he saw to his bewilderment that the
thief was Steve. Once more Steve went into the barn, and this time
when he come out he began to fumble about his forehead with both
hands, and a moment later Jason saw him move toward the gate,
masked and armed. A long shrill whistle came from the turnpike and
he heard Steve start into a gallop down the lane.




XXXVI

It was three days before Steve Hawn returned, ill-humored,
reddened by drink, and worn. As ever, Martha Hawn asked no
questions and Jason betrayed no curiosity, no suspicion, though he
was not surprised to learn that in a neighboring county the night
riders had been at their lawless work, and he had no doubt that
Steve was among them. Jason would be able to help but little that
autumn in the tobacco field, for it was his last year in college
and he meant to work hard at his books, but he knew that the
dispute between his step-father and Colonel Pendleton was still
unsettled--that Steve was bitter and had a secret relentless
purpose to get even. He did not dare give Colonel Pendleton a
warning, for it was difficult, and he knew the fiery old gentleman
would receive such an intervention with a gracious smile and
dismiss it with haughty contempt; so Jason decided merely to keep
a close watch on Steve.

On the opening day of college, as on the opening day three years
before, Jason walked through the fields to town, but he did not
start at dawn. The dew-born mists were gone and the land lay, with
no mystery to the eye or the mind, under a brilliant sun-the
fields of stately corn, the yellow tents of wheat gone from the
golden stretches of stubble, and green trees rising from the dull
golden sheen of the stripped blue-grass pastures. The cut,
upturned tobacco no longer looked like hunchbacked witches on
broom-sticks and ready for flight, for the leaves, waxen, oily,
inert, hung limp and listless from the sticks that pointed like
needles to the north to keep the stalks inclined as much as
possible from the sun. Even they had taken on the Midas touch of
gold, for all green and gold that world of blue-grass was--all
green and gold, except for the shaggy unkempt fields where the
king of weeds had tented the year before and turned them over to
his camp followers--ragweed, dockweed, white-top, and cockle-burr.
But the resentment against such an agricultural outrage that the
boy had caught from John Burnham was no longer so deep, for that
tobacco had kept his mother and himself alive and the father of
his best friend must look to it now to save himself from
destruction. All the way Jason, walking leisurely, confidently,
proudly, and with the fires of his ambition no less keen, thought
of the green mountain boy who had torn across those fields at
sunrise, that when "school took up" he might not be late--thought
of him with much humor and with no little sympathy. When he saw
the smoke cloud over the town he took to the white turnpike and
quickened his pace. Again the campus of the rival old Transylvania
was dotted with students moving to and fro. Again the same
policeman stood on the same corner, but now he shook hands with
Jason and called him by name. When he passed between the two gray
stone pillars with pyramidal tops and swung along the driveway
between the maple-trees and chattering sparrows, there were the
same boys with caps pushed back and trousers turned up, the same
girls with hair up and hair down, but what a difference now for
him! Even while he looked around there was a shout from a crowd
around John Burnham's doorway; several darted from that crowd
toward him and the crowd followed. A dozen of them were trying to
catch his hand at once, and the welcome he had seen Gray Pendleton
once get he got now for himself, for again a pair of hands went
high, a series of barbaric yells were barked out, and the air was
rent with the name of Jason Hawn. Among them Jason stood flushed,
shy, grateful. A moment later he saw John Burnham in the doorway--
looking no less pleased and waiting for him. Even the old
president paused on his crutches for a handshake and a word of
welcome. The boy found himself wishing that Marjorie--and Mavis--
were there, and, as he walked up the steps, from out behind John
Burnham Marjorie stepped--proud for him and radiant.

And so, through that autumn, the rectangular, diametric little
comedy went on between Marjorie and Jason in the Blue-grass and
between Gray and Mavis in the hills. No Saturday passed that Jason
did not spend at his mother's home or with John Burnham, and to
the mother and Steve and to Burnham his motive was plain--for most
of the boy's time was spent with Marjorie Pendleton. Somehow
Marjorie seemed always driving to town or coming home when Jason
was on his way home or going to town, and somehow he was always
afoot and Marjorie was always giving him a kindly lift one or the
other way. Moreover, horses were plentiful as barn-yard fowls on
Morton Sanders' farm, and the manager, John Burnham's brother, who
had taken a great fancy to Jason, gave him a mount whenever the
boy pleased. And so John Burnham saw the pair galloping the
turnpikes or through the fields, or at dusk going slowly toward
Marjorie's home. Besides, Marjorie organized many hunting parties
that autumn, and the moon and the stars looking down saw the two
never apart for long. About the intimacy Mrs. Pendleton and the
colonel thought little. Colonel Pendleton liked the boy, Mrs.
Pendleton wanted Marjorie at home, and she was glad for her to
have companionship. Moreover, to both, Marjorie was still a child,
anything serious would be absurd, and anyway Marjorie was meant
for Gray.

In the mountains Gray's interest in his life was growing every
day. He liked to watch things planned and grow into execution. His
day began with the screech of a whistle at midnight. Every morning
he saw the sun rise and the mists unroll and the drenched flanks
of the mountains glisten and drip under the sunlight. During the
afternoon he woke up in time to stroll down the creek, meet Mavis
after school and walk back to the circuit rider's house with her.
After supper every night he would go down the spur and sit under
the honeysuckles with her on the porch. The third time he came the
old man and woman quietly withdrew and were seen no more, and this
happened thereafter all the time. Meanwhile in the Blue-grass and
the hills the forked tongues of gossip began to play, reaching
last, as usual, those who were most concerned, but, as usual,
reaching them, too, in time. In the Blue-grass it was criticism of
Colonel and Mrs. Pendleton, their indifference, carelessness,
blindness, a gaping question of their sanity at the risk of even a
suspicion that such a mating might be possible--the proud daughter
of a proud family with a nobody from the hills, unknown except
that he belonged to a fierce family whose history could be written
in human blood; who himself had been in jail on the charge of
murder; whose mother could not write her own name; whose step-
father was a common tobacco tenant no less illiterate, and with a
brain that was a hotbed of lawless mischief, and who held the life
of a man as cheap as the life of a steer fattening for the
butcher's knife. But in all the gossip there was no sinister
suggestion or even thought save in the primitive inference of this
same Steve Hawn.

In the mountains, too, the gossip was for a while innocent. To the
simple democratic mountain way of thinking, there was nothing
strange in the intimacy of Mavis and Gray. There Gray was no
better than any mountain boy. He was in love with Mavis, he was
courting her, and if he won her he would marry her, and that
simply was all--particularly in the mind of old grandfather Hawn.
Likewise, too, was there for a while nothing sinister in the talk,
for at first Mavis held to the mountain custom, and would not walk
in the woods with Gray unless one of the school-children was
along--nothing sinister except to little Aaron Honeycutt, whose
code had been a little poisoned by his two years' stay outside the
hills.

Once more about each pair the elements of social tragedy began to
concentrate, intensify, and become active. The new development in
the hills made business competition keen between Shade Hawn and
Hiram Honeycutt, who each ran a hotel and store in the county-
seat. As old Jason Hawn and old Aaron Honeycutt had retired from
the leadership, and little Jason and little Aaron had been out of
the hills, leadership naturally was assumed by these two business
rivals, who revived the old hostility between the factions, but
gave vent to it in a secret, underhanded way that disgusted not
only old Jason but even old Aaron as well. For now and then a
hired Hawn would drop a Honeycutt from the bushes and a hired
Honeycutt would drop a Hawn. There was, said old Jason with an
oath of contempt, no manhood left in the feud. No principal went
gunning for a principal--no hired assassin for another of his
kind.

"Nobody ain't shootin' the RIGHT feller," said the old man. "Looks
like hit's a question of which hired feller gits fust the man who
hired the other feller."

And when this observation reached old Aaron he agreed heartily.

"Fer once in his life," he said, "old Jason Hawn kind o' by
accident is a-hittin' the truth." And each old man bet in his
secret heart, if little Aaron and little Jason were only at home
together, things would go on in quite a different way.

In the lowlands the tobacco pool had been formed and, when
persuasion and argument failed, was starting violent measures to
force into the pool raisers who would not go in willingly. In the
western and southern parts of the State the night riders had been
more than ever active. Tobacco beds had been destroyed, barns had
been burned, and men had been threatened, whipped, and shot.
Colonel Pendleton found himself gradually getting estranged from
some of his best friends. He quarrelled with old Morton Sanders,
and in time he retired to his farm, as though it were the pole of
the earth. His land was his own to do with as he pleased. No man,
no power but the Almighty and the law, could tell him what he MUST
do. The tobacco pool was using the very methods of the trust it
was seeking to destroy. Under those circumstances he considered
his duty to himself paramount to his duty to his neighbor, and his
duty to himself he would do; and so the old gentleman lived
proudly in his loneliness and refused to know fear, though the
night riders were getting busy now in the counties adjacent to the
Blue-grass, and were threatening raids into the colonel's own
county--the proudest in the State. Other "independents" hardly
less lonely, hardly less hated, had electrified their barbed-wire
fences, and had hired guards--fighting men from the mountains--to
watch their barns and houses, but such an example the colonel
would not follow, though John Burnham pleaded with him, and even
Jason dared at last to give him a covert warning, with no hint,
however, that the warning was against his own step-father Steve.
It was the duty of the law to protect him, the colonel further
argued; the county judge had sworn that the law would do its best;
and only when the law could not protect him would the colonel
protect himself.

And so the winter months passed until one morning a wood-thrush
hidden in green depths sent up a song of spring to Gray's ears in
the hills, and in the Blue-grass a meadow-lark wheeling in the
sun-light showered down the same song upon the heart of Jason
Hawn.

Almost every Saturday Mavis would go down to stay till Monday with
her grandfather Hawn. Gray would drift down there to see her--and
always, while Mavis was helping her grandmother in the kitchen,
Gray and old Jason would sit together on the porch. Gray never
tired of the old man's shrewd humor, quaint philosophy, his
hunting tales and stories of the feud, and old Jason liked Gray
and trusted him more the more he saw of him. And Gray was a little
startled when it soon became evident that the old man took it for
granted that in his intimacy with Mavis was one meaning and only
one.

"I al'ays thought Mavis would marry Jason," he said one night,
"but, Lordy Mighty, I'm nigh on to eighty an' I don't know no more
about gals than when I was eighteen. A feller stands more chance
with some of 'em stayin' away, an' agin if he stays away from some
of 'em he don't stand no chance at all. An' agin I rickollect that
if I hadn't 'a' got mad an' left grandma in thar jist at one time
an' hadn't 'a' come back jist at the right time another time, I'd
'a' lost her--shore. Looks like you're cuttin' Jason out mighty
fast now--but which kind of a gal Mavis in thar is, I don't know
no more'n if I'd never seed her."

Gray flushed and said nothing, and a little later the old man went
frankly on:

"I'm gittin' purty old now an' I hain't goin' to last much longer,
I reckon. An' I want you to know if you an' Mavis hitch up fer a
life-trot tergether I aim to divide this farm betwixt her an'
Jason, an' you an' Mavis can have the half up thar closest to the
mines, so you can be close to yo' work."

The boy was saved any answer, for the old man expected and waited
for none, so simple was the whole matter to him, but Gray, winding
up the creek homeward in the moonlight that night, did some pretty
serious thinking. No such interpretation could have been put on
the intimacy between him and Mavis at home, for there
companionship, coquetry, sentiment, devotion even, were possible
without serious parental concern. Young people in the Blue-grass
handled their own heart affairs, and so they did for that matter
in the hills, but Gray could not realize that primitive conditions
forbade attention without intention: for life was simple, mating
was early because life was so simple, and Nature's way with
humanity was as with her creatures of the fields and air except
for the eye of God and the hand of the law. A license, a few words
from the circuit rider, a cleared hill-side, a one-room log cabin,
a side of bacon, and a bag of meal--and, from old Jason's point of
view, Gray and Mavis could enter the happy portals, create life
for others, and go on hand in hand to the grave. So that where
complexity would block Jason in the Blue-grass, simplicity would
halt Gray in the hills. To be sure, the strangeness, the wildness,
the activity of the life had fascinated Gray. He loved to ride the
mountains and trails--even to slosh along the river road with the
rain beating on him, dry and warm under a poncho. Often he would
be caught out in the hills and have to stay all night in a cabin;
and thus he learned the way of life away from the mines and the
river bottoms. So far that poor life had only been pathetic and
picturesque, but now when he thought of it as a part of his own
life, of the people becoming through Mavis his people, he
shuddered and stopped in the moonlit road-aghast. Still, the code
of his father was his, all women were sacred, and with all there
would be but one duty for him, if circumstances, as they bade fair
to now, made that one duty plain. And if his father should go
under, if Morton Sanders took over his home and the boy must make
his own way and live his life where he was--why not? Gray sat in
the porch of the house on the spur, long asking himself that
question. He was asking it when he finally went to bed, and he
went with it, unanswered, to sleep.




XXXVII

The news reached Colonel Pendleton late one afternoon while he was
sitting on his porch--pipe in mouth and with a forbidden mint
julep within easy reach. He had felt the reticence of Gray's
letters, he knew that the boy was keeping back some important
secret from him as long as he could, and now, in answer to his own
kind, frank letter Gray had, without excuse or apology, told the
truth, and what he had not told the colonel fathomed with ease. He
had hardly made up his mind to go at once to Gray, or send for
him, when a negro boy galloped up to the stile and brought him a
note from Marjorie's mother to come to her at once--and the
colonel scented further trouble in the air.

There had been a turmoil that afternoon at Mrs. Pendleton's.
Marjorie had come home a little while before with Jason Hawn and,
sitting in the hallway, Mrs. Pendleton had seen Jason on the
stile, with his hat in one hand and his bridle reins in the other,
and Marjorie halting suddenly on her way to the house and wheeling
impetuously back toward him. To the mother's amazement and dismay
she saw that they were quarrelling--quarrelling as only lovers
can. The girl's face was flushed with anger, and her red lips were
winging out low, swift, bitter words. The boy stood straight,
white, courteous, and unanswering. He lifted his chin a little
when she finished, and unanswering turned to his horse and rode
away. The mother saw her daughter's face pale quickly. She saw
tears as Marjorie came up the walk, and when she rose in alarm and
stood waiting in the doorway, the girl fled past her and rushed
weeping upstairs.

Mrs. Pendleton was waiting in the porch when the colonel rode to
the stile, and the distress in her face was so plain even that far
away, that the colonel hurried up the walk, and there was no
greeting between the two:

"It's Marjorie, Robert," she said simply, and the old gentleman,
who had seen Jason come out of the yard gate and gallop toward
John Burnham's, guessed what the matter was, and he took the slim
white hands that were clenched together and patted them gently:

"There--there! Don't worry, don't worry!"

He led her into the house, and at the top of the steps stood
Marjorie in white, her hair down and tears streaming down her
face:

"Come here, Marjorie," called Colonel Pendleton, and she obeyed
like a child, talking wildly as she came:

"I know what you're going to say, Uncle Bob--I know it all. I'm
tired of all this talk about family, Uncle Bob, I'm tired of it."

She had stopped a few steps above, clinging with one trembling
hand to the balcony, as though to have her say quite out before
she went helplessly into the arms that were stretched out toward
her:

"Dead people are dead, Uncle Bob, and only live people really
count. People have to be alive to help you and make you happy. I
want to be happy, Uncle Bob--I want to be happy. I know all about
the Pendletons, Uncle Bob. They were Cavaliers--I know all that--
and they used to ride about sticking lances into peasants who
couldn't afford a suit of armor, but they can't do anything for me
now, and they mustn't interfere with me now. Anyhow, the Sudduths
were plain people and I'm not a bit ashamed of it, mother. Great-
grandfather Hiram lived in a log cabin. Grandfather Hiram ate with
his knife. I've SEEN him do it, and he kept on doing it when he
knew better just out of habit or stubbornness, but Jason's people
ate with their knives because they didn't HAVE anything but TWO-
pronged forks--I heard John Burnham say that. And Jason's family
is as good as the Sudduths, and maybe as the Pendletons, and he
wouldn't know it because his grandfathers were out of the world
and were too busy, fighting Indians and killing bears and things
for food. They didn't have TIME to keep their family trees
trimmed, and they didn't CARE anything about the old trees anyhow,
and I don't either. John Burnham has told me--"

"Marjorie!" said the colonel gently, for she was getting
hysterical. He held out his arms to her, and with another burst of
weeping she went into them.

Half an hour later, when she was calm, the colonel got her to ride
over home with him, and what she had not told her mother Marjorie
on the way told him--in a halting voice and with her face turned
aside.

"There's something funny and deep about him, Uncle Bob, and I
never could reach it. It piqued me and made me angry. I knew he
cared for me, but I could never make him tell it."

The colonel was shaking his old head wisely and comprehendingly.

"I don't know why, but I flew into a rage with him this afternoon
about nothing, and he never answered me a word, but stood there
listening--why, Uncle Bob, he stood there like--like a--a
gentleman--till I got through, and then he turned away--he never
did say anything, and I was so sorry and ashamed that I nearly
died. I don't know what to do now--and he won't come back, Uncle
Bob--I know he won't."

Her voice broke again, and the colonel silenced her by putting one
hand comfortingly on her knee and by keeping still himself. His
shoulders drooped a little as they walked from the stile toward
the house, and Marjorie ran her arm through his:

"Why, you're a little tired, aren't you, Uncle Bob?" she said
tenderly, and he did not answer except to pat her hand, against
which she suddenly felt his heart throb. He almost stumbled going
up the steps, and deadly pale he sank with a muffled groan into a
chair. With a cry the girl darted for a glass of water, but when
she came back, terrified, he was smiling:

"I'm all right--don't worry. I thought thas sun to-day was going
to be too much for me."

But still Marjorie watched him anxiously, and when the color came
back to his face she went behind him and wrapped her arms about
his neck and put her mouth to his ear:

"I'm just a plain little fool, Uncle Bob, and, as Gray says, I
talk through my aigrette. Now, don't you and mother worry--don't
worry the least little bit," and she tightened her arms and kissed
him several times on his forehead and cheek. "I must go now--and
if you don't take better care of yourself I'm going to come over
here and take care of you myself."

She was in front of him now and looking down fondly; and a
wistfulness that was almost childlike had come into the colonel's
face:

"I wish you could, little Marjorie--I wish you would."

He watched her gallop away--turning to wave her whip to him as she
went over the slope, her tears gone and once more radiant and gay-
-and the sadness of the coming twilight slowly overspread the
colonel's face. It was the one hope of his life that she would one
day come over to take care of him--and Gray. On into the twilight
he sat still and thoughtful. It looked serious for her and Gray.
Back his mind flashed to that night of the dance in the mountains,
when the four were children, and his wonder then as to what might
take place if that mountain boy and girl should have the chance in
the world that had already come to them. He began to wonder how
much of her real feeling Marjorie might have concealed--how much
Gray in his letters was keeping back of his. Such a union was
preposterous. He realized too late now the danger to youth of
simple proximity--he knew the exquisite sensitiveness of Gray in
any matter that meant consideration for others and for his own
honor, the generous warmhearted impulsiveness of Marjorie, and the
appeal that any romantic element in the situation would make to
them both. Perhaps he ought to go to the mountains. There was much
he might say to Gray, but what to Jason, or to Marjorie, with that
life-absorbing motive of his own--and his affairs at such a
crisis? The colonel shook his head helplessly. He was very tired,
and wished he could put the matter off till morning when he was
rested and his head was clear, but the questions had sunk talons
into his heart and brain that would not be unloosed, and the
colonel rose wearily and went within.

Marjorie looked serious after she told her mother that night that
she feared her uncle was not well, for Mrs. Pendleton became very
grave:

"Your Uncle Robert is very far from well. I'm afraid sometimes he
is sicker than any of us know."

"Mother!"

"And he is in great trouble, Marjorie."

The girl hesitated:

"Money trouble, mother?" she asked at last, "Why, you--we--why
don't--"

The mother interrupted with a shake of her head:

"He would go bankrupt first."

"Mother?"

The older woman looked up with apprehension, so suddenly charged
with an incredible something was the girl's tone:

"Why don't you marry Uncle Robert?"

The mother clutched at her heart with both hands, for an actual
spasm caught her there. Every trace of color shot from her face,
and with a rush came back--fire. She rose, gave her daughter one
look that was almost terror, and quickly left the room.

Marjorie sat aghast. She had caught with careless hand the veil of
some mystery--what long-hidden shrine was there behind it, what
sacred deeps long still had she stirred?




XXXVIII

Jason Hawn rode rapidly to one of Morton Sanders' great stables,
put his horse away himself, and, avoiding the chance of meeting
John Burnham, slipped down the slope to the creek, crossed on a
water gap, and struck across the sunset fields for home. He had
felt no anger at Marjorie's mysterious outbreak--only
bewilderment; and only bewilderment he felt now.

But as he strode along with his eyes on the ground, things began
to clear a little. The fact was that, as he had become more
enthralled by the girl's witcheries, the more helpless and stupid
he had become. Marjorie's nimble wit had played about his that
afternoon like a humming-bird around a sullen sunflower. He hardly
knew that every word, every glance, every gesture was a challenge,
and when she began stinging into him sharp little arrows of taunt
and sarcasm he was helpless as the bull's-hide target at which the
two sometimes practised archery. Even now when the poisoned points
began to fester, he could stir himself to no anger--he only felt
dazed and hurt and sore. Nobody was in sight when he reached his
mother's home and he sat down on the porch in the twilight
wretched and miserable. Around the corner of the house presently
he heard his mother and Steve coming, and around there they
stopped for some reason for a moment.

"I seed Babe Honeycutt yestiddy," Steve was saying. "He says
thar's a lot o' talk goin' on about Mavis an' Gray Pendleton. The
Honeycutts air doin' most o' the talkin' an' looks like the ole
trouble's comin' up again. Old Jason is tearin' mad an' swears
Gray'll have to git out o' them mountains--"

Jason heard them start moving and he rose and went quickly within
that they might know he had overheard. After supper he was again
on the porch brooding about Mavis and Gray when his mother came
out. He knew that she wanted to say something, and he waited.

"Jason," she said finally, "you don't believe Colonel Pendleton
cheated Steve--do you?"

"No," said the lad sharply. "Colonel Pendleton never cheated
anybody in his life--except himself."

"That's all I wanted to know," she sighed, but Jason knew that was
not all she wanted to say.

"Jason, I heerd two fellers in the lane to-day' talkin' about
tearin' up Colonel Pendleton's tobacco beds."

The boy was startled, but he did not show it.

"Nothin' but talk, I reckon."

"Well, if I was in his place I'd git some guards."

Marjorie sat at her window a long time that night before she went
to sleep. Her mother had come in, had held her tightly to her
breast, and had gone out with only a whispered good-night. And
while the girl was wondering once more at the strange effect of
her naive question, she recalled suddenly the yearning look of her
uncle that afternoon when she had mentioned Gray's name. Could
there be some thwarted hope in the lives of Gray's father and her
mother that both were now trying to realize in the lives of her
and Gray? Her mother had never spoken her wish, nor doubtless
Gray's father to him--nor was it necessary, for as children they
had decided the question themselves, as had Mavis and Jason Hawn,
and had talked about it with the same frankness, though with each
pair alike the matter had not been mentioned for a long time. Then
her mind leaped, and after it leaped her heart--if her Uncle
Robert would not let her mother help him, why, she too could never
help Gray, unless--why, of course, if Gray were in trouble she
would marry him and give him everything she had. The thought made
her glow, and she began to wish Gray would come home. He had been
a long time in those hills, his father was sick and worried--and
what was he doing down there anyhow? He had mentioned Mavis often
in his first letters, and now he wrote rarely, and he never spoke
of her at all. She began to get resentful and indignant, not only
at him but at Mavis, and she went to bed wishing more than ever
that Gray would come home. And yet playing around in her brain was
her last vision of that mountain boy standing before her, white
and silent--"like a gentleman"--and that vision would not pass
even in her dreams.

Through Colonel Pendleton's bed-room window an hour later two
pistol shots rang sharply, and through that window the colonel saw
a man leap the fence around his tobacco beds and streak for the
woods. From the shadow of a tree at his yard fence another flame
burst, and by its light he saw a crouching figure. He called out
sharply, the figure rose and came toward him, and in the moonlight
the colonel saw uplifted to him, apologetic and half shamed, the
face of Jason Hawn.

"No harm, colonel," he called. "Somebody was tearing up your
tobacco beds and I just scared him off. I didn't try to hit him."

The colonel was dazed, but he spoke at last gently.

"Well, well, I can't let you lose your sleep this way, Jason; I'll
get some guards now."

"If you won't let me," said the boy quickly, "you ought to send
for Gray."

The old gentleman looked thoughtful.

"Of course, perhaps I ought--why, I will."

"He won't come again to-night," said Jason. "I shot close enough
to scare him, I reckon, Good-night, colonel."

"Thank you, my boy--good-night."




XXXIX

It was court day at the county-seat. A Honeycutt had shot down a
Hawn in the open street, had escaped, and a Hawn posse was after
him. The incident was really a far effect of the recent news that
Jason Hawn was soon coming back home--and coming back to live.
Straightway the professional sneaks and scandal-mongers of both
factions got busy to such purpose that the Honeycutts were ready
to believe that the sole purpose of Jason's return was to revive
the feud and incidentally square a personal account with little
Aaron. Old Jason Hawn had started home that afternoon almost
apoplectic with rage, for word had been brought him that little
Aaron had openly said that it was high time that Jason Hawn came
home to look after his cousin and Gray Pendleton went home to take
care of his. It was a double insult, and to the old man's mind
subtly charged with a low meaning. Old as he was, he had tried to
find little Aaron, but the boy had left town.

Gray and Mavis were seated on the old man's porch when he came in
sight of his house, for it was Saturday, and Mavis started the
moment she saw her grandfather's face, and rose to meet him.

"What's the matter, grandpap?" The old man waved her back. "Git
back inter the house," he commanded shortly. "No--stay whar you
air. When do you two aim to git married?" Had a bolt of lightning
flashed through the narrow sunlit space between him and them, the
pair could not have been more startled, blinded. Mavis flushed
angrily, paled, and wheeled into the house. Gray rose in physical
response to the physical threat in the old man's tone and
fearlessly met the eyes that were glaring at him.

"I don't know what you mean, Mr. Hawn," he said respectfully. "I--
"

"The hell you don't," broke in the old man furiously. "I'll give
ye jes two minutes to hit the road and git a license. I'll give ye
an hour an' a half to git back. An' if you don't come back I'll
make Jason foller you to the mouth o' the pit o' hell an' bring ye
back alive or dead." Again the boy tried to speak, but the old man
would not listen.

"Git!" he cried, and, as the boy still made no move, old Jason
hurried on trembling legs into the house. Gray heard him cursing
and searching inside, and at the corner of the house appeared
Mavis with both of the old man's pistols and his Winchester.

"Go on, Gray," she said, and her face was still red with shame.
"You'll only make him worse, an' he'll kill you sure."

Gray shook his head: "No!"

"Please, Gray," she pleaded; "for God's sake--for my sake."

That the boy could not withstand. He started for the gate with his
hat in hand--is head high, and, as he slowly passed through the
gate and turned, the old man reappeared, looked fiercely after
him, and sank into a chair sick with rage and trembling. As Mavis
walked toward him with his weapons he glared at her, but she
passed him by as though she did not see him, and put the
Winchester and pistols in their accustomed places. She came out
with her bonnet in her hand, and already her calmness and her
silence had each had its effect--old Jason was still trembling,
but from his eyes the rage was gone.

"I'm goin' home, grandpap," she said quietly, "an' if it wasn't
for grandma I wouldn't come back. You've been bullyin' an' rough-
ridin' over men-folks and women-folks all your life, but you can't
do it no more with ME. An' you're not goin' to meddle in MY
business any more. You know I'm a good girl--why didn't you go
after the folks who've been talkin' instead o' pitchin' into Gray?
You know he'd die before he'd harm a hair o' my head or allow you
or anybody else to say anything against my good name. An' I tell
you to your face"--her tone fiercened suddenly--"if you hadn't 'a'
been an old man an' my grandfather, he'd 'a' killed you right
here. An' I'm goin' to tell you something more. He ain't
responsible for this talk--_I_ am. He didn't know it was goin' on-
-_I_ did. I'm not goin' to marry him to please you an' the
miserable tattletales you've been listenin' to. I reckon _I_ ain't
good enough--but I KNOW my kinfolks ain't fit to be his--even by
marriage. My daddy ain't, an' YOU ain't, an' there ain't but one
o' the whole o' our tribe who is--an' that's little Jason Hawn.
Now you let him alone an' you let me alone."

She put her bonnet on, flashed to the gate, and disappeared in the
dusk down the road. The old man's shaggy head had dropped forward
on his chest, he had shrunk down in his chair bewildered, and he
sat there a helpless, unanswering heap. When the moon rose, Mavis
was seated on the porch with her chin in both hands. The old
circuit rider and his wife had gone to bed. A whippoorwill was
crying with plaintive persistence far up a ravine, and the night
was deep and still about her, save for the droning of insect life
from the gloomy woods. Straight above her stars glowed thickly,
and in a gap of the hills beyond the river, where the sun had gone
down, the evening star still hung like a great jewel on the
velvety violet curtain of the night, and upon that her eyes were
fixed. On the spur above, her keen ears caught the soft thud of a
foot against a stone, and her heart answered. She heard a quick
leap across the branch, the sound of a familiar stride along the
road, and saw the quick coming of a familiar figure along the edge
of the moonlight, but she sat where she was and as she was until
Gray, with hat in hand, stood before her, and then only did she
lift to him eyes that were dark as the night but shining like that
sinking star in the little gap. The boy went down on one knee
before her, and gently pulled both of her, hands away from her
face with both his own, and held them tightly.

"Mavis," he said, "I want you to marry me--won't you, Mavis?"

The girl showed no surprise, said nothing--she only disengaged her
hands, took his face into them, and looked with unwavering silence
deep into his eyes, looked until he saw that the truth was known
in hers, and then he dropped his face into her lap and she put her
hands on his head and bent over him, so that her heart beat with
the throbbing at his temples. For a moment she held him as though
she were shielding him from every threatening danger, and then she
lifted his face again.

"No, Gray--it won't do--hush, now." She paused a moment to get
self-control, and then she went on rapidly, as though what she had
to say had been long prepared and repeated to herself many times:

"I knew you were coming to-night. I know why you were so late. I
know why you came. Hush, now--I know all that, too. Why, Gray,
ever since I saw you the first time--you remember?--why, it seems
to me that ever since then, even, I've been thinkin' o' this very
hour. All the time I was goin' to school when I first went to the
Blue-grass, when I was walkin' in the fields and workin' around
the house and always lookin' to the road to see you passin' by--I
was thinkin', thinkin' all the time. It seems to me every night of
my life I went to sleep thinkin'--I was alone so much and I was so
lonely. It was all mighty puzzlin' to me, but that time you didn't
take me to that dance--hush now--I began to understand. I told
Jason an' he only got mad. He didn't understand, for he was wilful
and he was a man, and men don't somehow seem to see and take
things like women--they just want to go ahead and make them the
way they want them. But I understood right then. And then when I
come here the thinkin' started all over again differently when I
was goin' back and forwards from school and walkin' around in the
woods and listenin' to the wood-thrushes, and sittin' here in the
porch at night alone and lyin' up in the loft there lookin' out of
the little window. And when I heard you were comin' here I got to
thinkin' differently, because I got to hopin' differently and
wonderin' if some miracle mightn't yet happen in this world once
more. But I watched you here, and the more I watched you, the more
I began to go back and think as I used to think. Your people ain't
mine, Gray, nor mine yours, and they won't benot in our lifetime.
I've seen you shrinkin' when you've been with me in the houses of
some of my own kin--shrinkin' at the table at grandpap's and here,
at the way folks eat an' live--shrinkin' at oaths and loud voices
and rough talk and liquor-drinkin' and all this talk about killin'
people, as though they were nothin' but hogs--shrinkin' at
everybody but me. If we stayed here, the time would come when
you'd be shrinkin' from me--don't now! But you ain't goin' to stay
here, Gray. I've heard Uncle Arch say you'd never make a business
man. You're too trustin', you've been a farmer and a gentleman for
too many generations. You're goin' back home--you've got to--some
day--I know that, and then the time would come when you'd be
ashamed of me if I went with you. It's the same way with Jason and
Marjorie. Jason will have to come back here--how do you suppose
Marjorie would feel here, bein' a woman, if you feel the way you
do, bein' a man? Why, the time would come when she'd be ashamed o'
him--only worse. It won't do, Gray." She turned his face toward
the gap in the hills.

"You see that star there? Well, that's your star, Gray. I named it
for you, and every night I've been lookin' out at it from my
window in the loft. And that's what you've been to me and what
Marjorie's been to Jason--just a star--a dream. We're not really
real to each other--you an' me--and Marjorie and Jason ain't. Only
Jason and I are real to each other and only you and Marjorie,
Jason and I have been worshippin' stars, and they've looked down
mighty kindly on us, so that they came mighty nigh foolin' us and
themselves. I read a book the other day that said ideals were
stars and were good to point the way, but that people needed lamps
to follow that way. It won't do, Gray. You are goin' back home to
carry a lamp for Marjorie, and maybe Jason'll come back to these
hills to carry a lantern for me."

Throughout the long speech the boy's eyes had never wavered from
hers. After one or two efforts to protest he had listened quite
intensely, marvelling at the startling revelation of such depths
of mind and heart-the startling penetration to the truth, for he
knew it was the truth. And when she rose he stayed where he was,
clinging to her hand, and kissing it reverently. He was speechless
even when, obeying the impulse of her hand, he rose in front of
her and she smiled gently.

"You don't have to say one word, Gray--I understand, bless your
dear, dear heart, I understand. Good-by, now." She stretched out
her hand, but his trembling lips and the wounded helplessness in
his eyes were too much for her, and she put her arms around him,
drew his head to her breast, and a tear followed her kiss to his
forehead. At the door she paused a moment.

"And until he comes," she half-whispered, "I reckon I'll keep my
lamp burning." Then she was gone.

Slowly the boy climbed back to the little house on the spur, and
to the porch, on which he sank wearily. While he and Marjorie and
Jason were blundering into a hopeless snarl of all their lives,
this mountain girl, alone with the hills and the night and the
stars, had alone found the truth--and she had pointed the way. The
camp lights twinkled below. The moon swam in majestic splendor
above. The evening star still hung above the little western gap in
the hills. It was his star; it was sinking fast: and she would
keep her lamp burning. When he climbed to his room, the cry of the
whippoorwill in the ravine came to him through his window--futile,
persistent, like a human wail for happiness. The boy went to his
knees at his bedside that night, and the prayer that went on high
from the depths of his heart was that God would bring the wish of
her heart to Mavis Hawn.




XL

Gray Pendleton was coming home. Like Jason, he, too, waited at the
little junction for dawn, and swept along the red edge of it, over
the yellow Kentucky River and through the blue-grass fields. Drawn
up at the station was his father's carriage and in it sat
Marjorie, with a radiant smile of welcome which gave way to sudden
tears when they clasped hands--tears that she did not try to
conceal. Uncle Robert was in bed, she said, and Gray did not
perceive any significance in the tone with which she added, that
her mother hardly ever left him. She did not know what the matter
was, but he was very pale, and he seemed to be growing weaker. The
doctor was cheery and hopeful, but her mother, she emphasized, was
most alarmed, and again Gray did not notice the girl's peculiar
tone. Nor did the colonel seem to be worried by the threats of the
night riders. It was Jason Hawn who was worried and had persuaded
the colonel to send for Gray. The girl halted when she spoke
Jason's name, and the boy looked up to find her face scarlet and
her eyes swerve suddenly from his to the passing fields. But as
quickly they swerved back to find Gray's face aflame with the
thought of Mavis. For a moment both looked straight ahead in
silence, and in that silence Marjorie became aware that Gray had
not asked about Jason, and Gray that Marjorie had not mentioned
Mavis's name. But now both made the omission good-and Gray spoke
first.

Mavis was well. She was still teaching school. She had lived a
life of pathetic loneliness, but she had developed in an amazing
way through that very fact, and she had grown very beautiful. She
had startled him by her insight into--he halted--into everything--
and how was Jason getting along? The girl had been listening,
covertly watching, and had grown quite calm. Jason, too, was well,
but he looked worried and overworked. His examinations were going
on now. He had written his graduating speech but had not shown it
to her, though he had said he would. Her mother and Uncle Robert
had grown very fond of him and admired him greatly, but lately she
had not seen him, he was so busy. Again there was a long silence
between them, but when they reached, the hill whence both their
homes were visible Marjorie began as though she must get out
something' that was on her mind before they reached Colonel
Pendleton's gate.

"Gray," she said hesitantly and so seriously that the boy turned
to her, "did it ever cross your mind that there was ever any
secret between Uncle Robert and mother?"

The boy's startled look was answer enough and she went on telling
him of the question she had asked her mother.

"Sometimes," she finished, "I think that your father and my mother
must have loved each other first and that something kept them from
marrying. I know that they must have talked it over lately, for
there seems to be a curious understanding between them now, and
the sweetest peace has come to both of them."

She paused, and Gray, paralyzed with wonder, still made no answer.
They had passed through the gate now and in a moment more would be
at Gray's home. Around each barn Gray saw an armed guard; there
was another at the yard gate, and there were two more on the steps
of the big portico.

"Maybe," the girl went on naively, almost as though she were
talking to herself, "that's why they've both always been so
anxious to have us--" Again she stopped--scarlet.




XLI

Jason Hawn's last examination was over, and he stepped into the
first June sunlight and drew it into his lungs with deep relief.
Looking upward from the pavement below, the old president saw his
confident face.

"It seems you are not at all uneasy," he said, and his keen old
eyes smiled humorously.

Jason reddened a little.

"No, sir--I'm not."

"Nor am I," said the old gentleman, "nor will you forget that this
little end is only the big beginning."

"Thank you, sir."

"You are going back home? You will be needed there."

"Yes, sir."

"Good!"

It was the longest talk Jason had ever had with the man he all but
worshipped, and while it was going on the old scholar was
painfully climbing the steps--so that the last word was flung back
with the sharp, soldier-like quality of a command given by an
officer who turned his back with perfect trust that it would be
obeyed, and in answer to that trust the boy's body straightened
and his very much about changing his ways, that he no longer had
any resentment against Colonel Pendleton, and wanted now to live a
better life. His talk might have fooled Jason but for the fact
that he shrewdly noted the little effect it all had on his mother.
Entering the mouth of the lane, Jason saw Steve going from the
yard gate to the house, and his brows wrinkled angrily--Steve was
staggering. He came to the door and glared at Jason.

"Whut you doin' out hyeh?"

"I'm goin' to see Gray through his troubles," said Jason quietly.

"I kind o' thought you had troubles enough o' yo' own," sneered
the man.

Jason did not answer. His mother was seated within with her back
to the door, and when she turned Jason saw that she had been
weeping, and, catching sight of a red welt on her temple, he
walked over to her.

"How'd that happen, mammy?"

She hesitated and Jason whirled with such fury that his mother
caught him with both arms, and Steve lost no time reaching for his
gun.

"I jammed it agin the kitchen door, Jasie."

He looked at her, knew that she was lying, and when he turned to
go, halted at the door.

"If you ever touch my mother again," he said with terrifying
quiet, "I'll kill you as sure as there is a God in heaven to
forgive me."

Across the midsummer fields Jason went swiftly. On his right, half
of a magnificent woodland was being laid low--on his left, another
was all gone--and with Colonel Pendleton both, he knew, had been
heart-breaking deeds of necessity, for his first duty, that
gentleman claimed, was to his family and to his creditors, and
nobody could rob him of his right to do what he pleased, much less
what he ought, with his own land. And so the colonel still stood
out against friend and neighbor, and open and secret foes. His
tobacco beds had been raided, one of his barns had been burned,
his cattle had been poisoned, and, sick as he was, threats were
yet coming in that the night riders would burn his house and take
his life. Across the turnpike were the fields and untouched
woodlands of Marjorie, and it looked as though the hand of
Providence had blessed one side of the road and withered the other
with a curse. On top of the orchard fence, to the western side of
the house, Jason sat a while. The curse was descending on Gray's
innocent head and he had had the weakness and the folly to lift
his eyes to the blessing across the way. As Mavis had pointed out
the way to Gray, so Marjorie, without knowing it, had pointed. the
way for him. When long ago he had been helpless before her by the
snow-fringed willows at the edge of the pond in the old college
yard, she had been frightened and had shrunk away. When he gained
his self-control, she had lost hers, and in her loneliness had
come trailing toward him almost like a broken-winged young bird
looking for mother help--and he had not misunderstood, though his
heart ached for her suffering as it ached for her. And Marjorie
had been quite right--he had never come back after that one
quarrel, and he would never come. The old colonel had gone to him,
but he had hardly more than opened his lips when he had both hands
on the boy's shoulders with broken words of sympathy and then had
turned away--so quickly had he seen that Jason fully understood
the situation and had disposed of it firmly, proudly, and finally-
-for himself. The mountains were for Jason--there were his duty
and the work of his life. Under June apples turning golden, and
amid the buzzing of bees, the boy went across the orchard, and at
the fence he paused again. Marjorie and her mother were coming out
of the house with Gray, and Jason watched them walk to the stile.
Gray was tanned, and even his blonde head had been turned copper
by the mountain sun, while the girl looked like a great golden-
hearted lily. But it was Gray's face as he looked at her that
caught the boy's eyes and held them fast, for the face was tense,
eager, and worshipping.

He saw Marjorie and her mother drive away, saw Gray wave to them
and turn back to the house, and then he was so shocked at the
quick change to haggard worry that draped his friend like a cloak
from head to foot that he could hardly call to him. And so Jason
waited till Gray had passed within, and then he leaped the fence
and made for the portico. Gray himself answered his ring and with
a flashing smile hurried forward when he saw Jason in the doorway.
The two clasped hands and for one swift instant searched each
other's eyes with questions too deep and delicate to be put into
words--each wondering how much the other might know, each silent
if the other did not know. For Gray had learned from his father
about Steve Hawn, and Jason's suspicions of Steve he had kept to
himself.

"My father would like to have you as our guest, Jason, while I am
here," Gray said with some embarrassment, "but he doesn't feel
like letting you take the risk."

Jason threw back the lapel of his coat that covered his badge as
deputy.

"That's what I'm here for," he said with a smile, "but I think I'd
better stay at home. I'll be on hand when the trouble comes."

Gray, too, smiled.

"You don't have to tell me that."

"How is the colonel?"

"He's pretty bad. He wants to see you."

Jason lowered his voice when they entered the hallway. "The
soldiers have reached town to-day. If there's anything going to be
done, it will probably be done to-night."

"I know."

"We won't tell the colonel."

"No."

Then Gray led the way to the sick-room and softly opened the door.
In a great canopied bed lay Colonel Pendleton with his face turned
toward the window, through which came the sun and air, the odors
and bird-songs of spring-time, and when that face turned, Jason
was shocked by its waste and whiteness and by the thinness of the
hand that was weakly thrust out to him. But the fire of the
brilliant eyes burned as ever; there was with him, prone in bed,
still the same demeanor of stately courtesy; and Jason felt his
heart melt and then fill as always with admiration for the man,
the gentleman, who unconsciously had played such a part in the
moulding of his own life, and as always with the recognition of
the unbridgable chasm between them--between even him and Gray. The
bitter resentment he had first felt against this chasm was gone
now, for now he understood and accepted. As men the three were
equal, but father and son had three generations the start of him.
He could see in them what he lacked himself, and what they were
without thought he could only consciously try to be--and he would
keep on trying. The sick man turned his face again to the window
and the morning air. When he turned again he was smiling faintly
and his voice was friendly and affectionate:

"Jason, I know why you are here. I'm not going to thank you, but
I--Gray"--he paused ever so little, and Jason sadly knew what it
meant--"will never forget it. I want you two boys to be friends as
long as you live. I'm sorry, but it looks as though you would both
have to give up yourselves to business--particularly sorry about
Gray, for that is my fault. For the good of our State I wish you
both were going to sit side by side at Frankfort, in Congress, and
the Senate, and fight it out"--he smiled whimsically--"some day
for the nomination for the Presidency. The poor old commonwealth
is in a bad way, and it needs just such boys as you two are. The
war started us downhill, but we might have done better--I know I
might. The earth was too rich--it made life too easy. The horse,
the bottle of whiskey, and the plug of tobacco were all too easily
the best--and the pistol always too ready. We've been cartooned
through the world with a fearsome, half-contemptuous slap on the
back. Our living has been made out of luxuries. Agriculturally,
socially, politically, we have gone wrong, and but for the
American sense of humor the State would be in a just, nation-wide
contempt. The Ku-Klux, the burning of toll-gates, the Goebel
troubles, and the night rider are all links in the same chain of
lawlessness, and but for the first the others might not have been.
But we are, in spite of all this, a law-abiding people, and the
old manhood of the State is still here. Don't forget that--THE OLD
MANHOOD IS HERE."

Jason had sat eager-eyed and listening hard. Bewildered Gray felt
his tears welling, for never had he heard in all his life his
father talk this way. Again Colonel Pendleton turned his face to
the window and went on as though to the world outside.

"I wouldn't let anybody out there say this about us, nor would
you, and maybe if I thought I was going to live many years longer
I might not be saying it now, for some Kentuckian might yet make
me eat my words."

At this the eyes of the two boys crossed and both smiled faintly,
for though the sick man had been a generous liver, his palate
could never have known the taste of one of his own words.

"I don't know--but our ambition is either dying or sinking to a
lower plane, and what a pity, for the capacity is still here to
keep the old giants still alive if the young men could only see,
feel, and try. And if I were as young as one of you two boys, I'd
try to find and make the appeal."

He turned his brilliant eyes to Jason and looked for a moment
silently.

"The death-knell of me and mine has been sounded unless boys like
Gray here keep us alive after death, but the light of your hills
is only dawning. It's a case of the least shall be first, for your
pauper counties are going to be the richest in the State. The
Easterners are buying up our farms as they would buy a yacht or a
motor-car, the tobacco tenants are getting their mites of land
here and there, and even you mountaineers, when you sell your coal
lands, are taking up Blue-grass acres. Don't let the Easterner
swallow you, too. Go home, and, while you are getting rich, enrich
your citizenship, and you and Gray help land-locked, primitive old
Kentucky take her place among the modern sisterhood that is making
the nation. To use a phrase of your own--get busy, boys, get busy
after I am gone."

And then Colonel Pendleton laughed.

"I am hardly the one to say all this, or rather I am just the one
because I am a--failure."

"Father."

The word came like a sob from Gray.

"Oh, yes, I am--but I have never lied except for others, and I
have not been afraid."

Again his face went toward the window.

"Even now," he added in a solemn whisper that was all to himself,
"I believe, and am not afraid."

Presently he lifted himself on one elbow and with Gray's
assistance got to a sitting posture. Then he pulled a paper from
beneath his pillow.

"I want to tell you something, Jason. That was all true, every
word you said the first time Gray and I saw you at your
grandfather's house, and I want you to know now that your land was
bought over my protest and without my knowledge. My own interest
in the general purchase was in the form of stock, and here it is."

Jason's heart began to beat violently.

"Whatever happens to me, this farm will have to be sold, but there
will be something left for Gray. This stock is in Gray's name, and
it is worth now just about what would have been a fair price for
your land five years after it was bought. It is Gray's, and I am
going to give it to him." He handed the paper to bewildered Gray,
who looked at it dazedly, went with it to the window, and stood
there looking out--his father watching him closely.

"You might win in a suit, Jason, I know, but I also know that you
could never collect even damages."

At these words Gray wheeled.

"Then this belongs to you, Jason."

The father smiled and nodded approval and assent.

That night there was a fusillade of shots, and Jason and Gray
rushed out with a Winchester in hand to see one barn in flames and
a tall figure with a firebrand sneaking toward the other. Both
fired and the man dropped, rose to his feet, limped back to the
edge of the woods, and they let him disappear. But all the night,
fighting the fire and on guard against another attack, Jason was
possessed with apprehension and fear--that limping figure looked
like Steve Hawn. So at the first streak of dawn he started for his
mother's home, and when that early he saw her from afar standing
on the porch and apparently looking for him, he went toward her on
a run. She looked wild-eyed, white, and sleepless, but she showed
no signs of tears.

"Where's Steve, mammy?" called Jason in a panting whisper, and
when she nodded back through the open door his throat eased and he
gulped his relief.

"Is he all right?"

She looked at him queerly, tried to speak, and began to tremble so
violently that he stepped quickly past her and stopped on the
threshold--shuddering. A human shape lay hidden under a
brilliantly colored quilt on his mother's bed, and the rigidity of
death had moulded its every outline.

"I reckon you've done it at last, Jasie," said a dead, mechanical
voice behind him.

"Good God, mammy--it must have been Gray or me."

"One of you, shore. He said he saw you shoot at the same time, and
only one of you hit him. I hope hit was you."

Jason turned--horrified, but she was calm and steady now.

"Hit was fitten fer you to be the one. Babe never killed yo'
daddy, Jasie--hit was Steve."




XLII

Gray Pendleton, hearing from a house-servant of the death of Steve
Hawn, hurried over to offer his help and sympathy, and Martha
Hawn, too quick for Jason's protest, let loose the fact that the
responsibility for that death lay between the two. To her simple
faith it was Jason's aim that the intervening hand of God had
directed, but she did not know what the law of this land might do
to her boy, and perhaps her motive was to shield him if possible.
While she spoke, one of her hands was hanging loosely at her side
and the other was clenched tightly at her breast.

"What have you got there, mammy?" said Jason gently. She
hesitated, and at last held out her hand--in the palm lay a
misshapen bullet.

"Steve give me this--hit was the one that got him, he said. He
said mebbe you boys could tell whichever one's gun hit come from."

Both looked at the piece of battered, blood-stained lead with
fascinated horror until Gray, with a queer little smile, took it
from her hand, for he knew, what Jason did not, that the night
before they had used guns of a different calibre, and now his
heart and brain worked swiftly and to a better purpose than he
meant, or would ever know.

"Come on, Jason, you and I will settle the question right now."

And, followed by mystified Jason, he turned from the porch and
started across the yard. Standing in the porch, the mother saw the
two youths stop at the fence, saw Gray raise his right hand high,
and then the piece of lead whizzed through the air and dropped
with hardly more than the splash of a raindrop in the centre of
the pond. The mother understood and she gulped hard. For a moment
the two talked and she saw them clasp hands. Then Gray turned
toward home and Jason came slowly back to the house. The boy said
nothing, the stony calm of the mother's face was unchanged--their
eyes met and that was all.

An hour later, John Burnham came over, told Jason to stay with his
mother, and went forthwith to town. Within a few hours all was
quickly, quietly done, and that night Jason started with his
mother and the body of Mavis's father back to the hills. The
railroad had almost reached the county-seat now, and at the end of
it old Jason Hawn and Mavis were waiting in the misty dawn with
two saddled horses and a spring wagon. The four met with a
handshake, a grave "how-dye," and no further speech. And thus old
Jason and Martha Hawn jolted silently ahead, and little Jason and
Mavis followed silently behind. Once or twice Jason turned to look
at her. She was in black, and the whiteness of her face, unstained
with tears, lent depth and darkness to her eyes, but the eyes were
never turned toward him.

When they entered town there were Hawns in front of one store and
one hotel on one side of the street. There were Honeycutts in
front of one store and one hotel on the other side, and Jason saw
the lowering face of little Aaron, and towering in one group the
huge frame of Babe Honeycutt. Silently the Hawns fell in behind on
horseback, and on foot, and gravely the Honeycutts watched the
procession move through the town and up the winding road.

The pink-flecked cups of the laurel were dropping to the ground,
the woods were starred with great white clusters of rhododendron,
wood-thrushes, unseen, poured golden rills of music from every
cool ravine, air and sunlight were heavy with the richness of
June, and every odor was a whisper, every sound a voice, and every
shaking leaf a friendly little beckoning hand--all giving him
welcome home. The boy began to choke with memories, but Mavis
still gave no sign. Once she turned her head when they passed her
little log school-house where was a little group of her pupils who
had not known they were to have a holiday that day, and whose
faces turned awe-stricken when they saw the reason, and
sympathetic when Mavis gave them a kindly little smile. Up the
creek there and over the sloping green plain of the tree-tops hung
a cloud of smoke from the mines. A few moments more and they
emerged from an arched opening of trees. The lightning-rod of old
Jason's house gleamed high ahead, and on the sunny crest of a bare
little knoll above it were visible the tiny homes built over the
dead in the graveyard of the Hawns. And up there, above the
murmuring sweep of the river, and with many of his kin who had
died in a similar way, they laid "slick Steve" Hawn. The old
circuit rider preached a short funeral sermon, while Mavis and her
mother stood together, the woman dry-eyed, much to the wonder of
the clan, the girl weeping silently at last, and Jason behind
them--solemn, watchful, and with his secret working painfully in
his heart. He had forbade his mother to tell Mavis, and perhaps he
would never tell her himself; for it might be best for her never
to know that her father had raised the little mound under which
his father slept but a few yards away, and that in turn his hands,
perhaps, were lowering Steve Hawn into his grave.

From the graveyard all went to old Jason's house, for the old man
insisted that Martha Hawn must make her home with him until young
Jason came back to the mountains for good. Until then Mavis, too,
would stay there with Jason's mother, and with deep relief the boy
saw that the two women seemed drawn to each other closer than ever
now. In the early afternoon old Jason limped ahead of him to the
barn to show his stock, and for the first time Jason noticed how
feeble his grandfather was and how he had aged during his last
sick spell. His magnificent old shoulders had drooped, his walk
was shuffling, and even the leonine spirit of his bushy brows and
deep-set eyes seemed to have lost something of its old fire. But
that old fire blazed anew when the old man told him about the
threats and insults of little Aaron Honeycutt, and the story of
Mavis and Gray.

"Mavis in thar," he rumbled, "stood up fer him agin me--agin ME.
She 'lowed thar wasn't a Hawn fitten to be kinfolks o' his even by
marriage, less'n 'twas you."

"ME?"

"An' she told me--ME--to mind my own business. Is that boy Gray
comin' back hyeh?"

"Yes, sir, if his father gets well, and maybe he'll come anyhow."

"Well, that gal in thar is plum' foolish about him, but I'm goin'
to let you take keer o' all that now."

Jason answered nothing, for the memory of Gray's worshipping face,
when he went down the walk with Marjorie at Gray's own home, came
suddenly back to him, and the fact that Mavis was yet in love with
Gray began to lie with sudden heaviness on his mind and not
lightly on his heart.

"An' as fer little Aaron Honeycutt--"

Over the barn-yard gate loomed just then the huge shoulders of
Babe Honeycutt coming from the house where he had gone to see his
sister Martha. Jason heard the shuffling of big feet and he turned
to see Babe coming toward him fearlessly, his good-natured face in
a wide smile and his hand outstretched. Old Jason peered through
his spectacles with some surprise, and then grunted with much
satisfaction when they shook hands.

"Well, Jason, I'm glad you air beginnin' to show some signs o'
good sense. This feud business has got to stop--an' now that you
two air shakin' hands, hit all lays betwixt you and little Aaron."

Babe colored and hesitated.

"That's jus' whut I wanted to say to Jason hyeh. Aaron's drinkin'
a good deal now. I hears as how he's a-threatenin' some, but if
Jason kind o' keeps outen his way an' they git together when he's
sober, hit'll be easy."

"Yes," said old Jason, grimly, "but I reckon you Honeycutts had
better keep Aaron outen his way a leetle, too."

"I'm a-doin' all I can," said Babe earnestly, and he slouched
away.

"Got yo' gun, Jason?"

"No."

"Well, you kin have mine till you git away again. I want all this
feud business stopped, but I hain't goin' to have you shot down
like a turkey at Christmas by a fool boy who won't hardly know
whut he's doin'."

Jason started for the house, but the old man stayed at the stable
to give directions to a neighbor who had come to feed his stock.
It sickened the boy to think that he must perhaps be drawn into
the feud again, but he would not be foolish enough not to take all
precaution against young Aaron. At the yard fence he stopped,
seeing Mavis under an apple-tree with one hand clutching a low
bough and her tense face lifted to the west. He could see that the
hand was clenched tightly, for even the naked forearm was taut as
a bowstring. The sun was going down in the little gap, above it
already one pale star was swung, and upon it her eyes seemed to be
fixed. She heard his step and he knew it, for he saw her face
flush, but without looking around she turned into the house. That
night she seemed to avoid the chance that he might speak to her
alone, and the boy found himself watching her covertly and
closely, for he recalled what Gray had said about her. Indeed,
some change had taken place that was subtle and extraordinary. He
saw his mother deferring to her--leaning on her unconsciously. And
old Jason, to the boy's amazement, was less imperious when she was
around, moderated his sweeping judgments, looked to her from under
his heavy brows, apparently for approval or to see that at least
he gave no offence--deferred to her more than to any man or woman
within the boy's memory. And Jason himself felt the emanation from
her of some new power that was beginning to chain his thoughts to
her. All that night Mavis was on his mind, and when he woke next
morning it was Mavis, Mavis still. She was clear-eyed, calm,
reserved when she told him good-by, and once only she smiled. Old
Jason had brought out one of his huge pistols, but Mavis took it
from his unresisting hands and Jason rode away unarmed. It was
just as well, for as his train started, a horse and a wild youth
came plunging down the riverbank, splashed across, and with a yell
charged up to the station. Through the car window Jason saw that
it was little Aaron, flushed of face and with a pistol in his
hand, looking for him. A sudden storm of old instincts burst
suddenly within him, and had he been armed he would have swung
from the train and settled accounts then and there. As it was, he
sat still and was borne away shaken with rage from head to foot.




XLIII

Commencement day was over, Jason Hawn had made his last speech in
college, and his theme was "Kentucky." In all seriousness and
innocence he had lashed the commonwealth for lawlessness from
mountain-top to river-brim, and his own hills he had flayed
mercilessly. In all seriousness and innocence, when he was packing
his bag three hours later in "Heaven," he placed his big pistol on
top of his clothes so that when the lid was raised, the butt of it
would be within an inch of his right hand. On his way home he
might meet little Aaron on the train, and he did not propose to be
at Aaron's mercy again.

While the band played, ushers with canes wrapped with red, white,
and blue ribbons had carried him up notes of congratulation, and
among them was a card from Marjorie and a bouquet from her own
garden. John Burnham's eyes sought his with pride and affection.
The old president, handing him his diploma, said words that
covered him with happy confusion and brought a cheer from his
fellow-students. When he descended from the platform, Gray grasped
his hand, and Marjorie with lips and eyes gave him ingenuous
congratulations, as though the things that were between them had
never been.

An hour later he drove with John Burnham through soldiers in the
streets and past the Gatling-gun out into the country, and was
deposited at the mouth of the lane. For the last time he went to
the little cottage that had been his mother's home and walked
slowly around garden and barn, taking farewell of everything
except memories that he could never lose. Across the fields he
went once more to Colonel Pendleton's, and there he found Gray
radiant, for his father was better, and the doctor, who was just
leaving, said that he might yet get well. And there was little
danger now from the night riders, for the county judge had
arranged a system of signals by bonfires through all the country
around the town. He had watchers on top of the court-house,
soldiers always ready, and motor-cars waiting below to take them
to any place of disturbance if a bonfire blazed. So Gray said it
was not good-by for them for long, for when his father was well
enough he was coming back to the hills. Again the old colonel
wished Jason well and patted him on the arm affectionately when
they shook hands, and then Jason started for the twin house on the
hill across the turnpike to tell Marjorie and her mother good-by.

An hour later Gray found Marjorie seated on a grape-vine bench
under honeysuckles in her mother's old-fashioned garden, among
flowers and bees. Jason had just told her good-by. For the last
time he had felt the clasp of her hand, had seen the tears in her
eyes, and now he was going for the last time through the fragrant
fields--his face set finally for the hills.

"Father is better, the county judge has waked up, and there is no
more danger from the night riders, and so I am going back to the
mountains now myself."

"Jason has just gone."

"I know."

"Back to Mavis?"

"I don't know."

Marjorie smiled with faint mischief and grew serious.

"I wonder if you have had the same experience, Gray, that I've had
with Mavis and Jason. There was never a time that I did not feel
in both a mysterious something that always baffled me--a barrier
that I couldn't pass, and knew I never could pass. I've felt it
with Mavis, even when we were together in my own room late at
night, talking our hearts to each other."

"I know--I've felt the same thing in Jason always."

"What is it?"

"I've heard John Burnham say it's a reserve, a reticence that all
primitive people have, especially mountaineers; a sort of Indian-
like stoicism, but less than the Indian's because the influences
that produce it--isolation, loneliness, companionship with
primitive wilds-have been a shorter while at work."

"That's what attracted me," said Marjorie frankly, "and I couldn't
help always trying to break it down--but I never did. Was--was
that what attracted you?" she asked naively.

"I don't know--but I felt it."

"And did you try to break it down?"

"No; it broke me down."

"Ah!" Marjorie looked very thoughtful for a moment. They were
getting perilously near the old theme now, and Gray was getting
grim and Marjorie petulant.

And then suddenly:

"Gray, did you ever ask Mavis to marry you?"

Gray reddened furiously and turned his face away.

"Yes," he said firmly. When he looked around again a hostile right
shoulder was pointing at him, and over the other shoulder the girl
was gazing at--he knew not what.

"Marjorie, you oughtn't to have asked me that. I can't explain
very well. I--" He stumbled and

He stopped, for the girl had turned astonished eyes upon him.

"Explain what?" she asked with demure wonder. "It's all right. I
came near asking Jason to marry me."

"Marjorie!" exploded Gray.

"Well!"

A negro boy burst down the path, panting:

"Miss Marjorie, yo' mother says you an' Mr. Gray got to come right
away."

Both sprang to their feet, Gray white and Marjorie's mischievous
face all quick remorse and tenderness. Together they went swiftly
up the walk and out to the stile where Gray's horse and buggy were
hitched, and without a word Marjorie, bareheaded as she was,
climbed into the buggy and they silently sped through the fields.

Mrs. Pendleton met them at the door, her face white and her hands
clenched tightly in front of her. Speechless with distress, she
motioned them toward the door of the sick-room, and when the old
colonel saw them coming together, his tired eyes showed such a
leap of happiness that Gray, knowing that he misunderstood, had
not the heart to undeceive him, and he looked helplessly to
Marjorie. But that extraordinary young woman's own eyes answered
the glad light in the colonel's, and taking bewildered Gray by the
hand she dropped with him on one knee by the bedside.

"Yes, Uncle Bob," Gray heard her say tenderly, "Gray's not going
back to the mountains. He's going to stay here with us, for you
and I need him."

The old man laid a hand on the bright head of each, his eyes
lighting with the happiness of his life's wish fulfilled, and
chokingly he murmured:

"My children--Gray--Marjorie." And then his eyes rose above them
to the woman who had glided in.

"Mary--look here."

She nodded, smiling tenderly, and Gray felt Marjorie rising to her
feet.

"Call us, mother," she whispered.

Both saw her kneel, and then they were alone in the big hallway,
and Gray, still dazed, was looking into Marjorie's eyes.

"Marjorie--Marjorie--do you--"

Her answer was a rush into his outstretched arms, and, locked
fast, they stood heart to heart until the door opened behind them.
Again hand in hand they kneeled side by side with the mother. The
colonel's eyes dimmed slowly with the coming darkness, the
smiling, pallid lips moved, and both leaned close to hear.

"Gray--Marjorie--Mary." His last glance turned from them to her,
rested there, and then came the last whisper:

"Our children."




XLIV

Jason did not meet young Aaron on the train, though as he neared
the county-seat he kept a close watch, whenever the train stopped
at a station, on both doors of his car, with his bag on the seat
in front of him unbuckled and unlocked. At the last station was
one Honeycutt lounging about, but plainly evasive of him. There
was a little group of Hawns about the Hawn store and hotel, and
more Honeycutts and Hawns on the other side of the street farther
down, but little Aaron did not appear. It seemed, as he learned a
few minutes later, that both factions were in town for the meeting
between Aaron and him, and later still he learned that young
Honeycutt loped into town after Jason had started up the river and
was much badgered about his late arrival. At the forks of the road
Jason turned toward the mines, for he had been casually told by
Arch Hawn that he would find his mother up that way. The old
circuit rider's wife threw her arms around the boy when he came to
her porch, and she smiled significantly when she told him that his
mother had walked over the spur that morning to take a look at her
old home, and that Mavis had gone with her.

Jason slowly climbed the spur. To his surprise he saw a spiral of
smoke ascending on the other side, just where he once used to see
it, but he did not hurry, for it might be coming from a miner's
cabin that had been built near the old place. On top of the spur,
however, he stopped-quite stunned. That smoke was coming out of
his mother's old chimney. There was a fence around the yard, which
was clear of weeds. The barn was rebuilt, there was a cow browsing
near it, and near her were three or four busily rooting pigs. And
stringing beans on the porch were his mother--and Mavis Hawn.
Jason shouted his bewilderment, and the two women lifted their
eyes. A high, shrill, glad answer came from his mother, who rose
to meet him, but Mavis sat where she was with idle hands.

"Mammy!" cried Jason, for there was a rich color in the pallid
face he had last seen, she looked years younger, and she was
smiling. It was all the doing of Arch Hawn--a generous impulse or
an act of justice long deferred.

"Why, Jason!" said his mother. "Arch is a-goin' to gimme back the
farm fer my use as long as I live."

And Mavis had left the old circuit rider and come to live with
her. The girl looked quiet, placid, content--only, for a moment,
she sank the deep lights of her eyes deep into his and the
scrutiny seemed to bring her peace, for she drew a long breath and
at him her eyes smiled. There was more when later Mavis had
strolled down toward the barn to leave the two alone.

"Is Mavis goin' to live with you all the time?"

"Hit looks like hit--she brought over ever'thing she has."

The mother smiled suddenly, looked to see that the girl was out of
sight, and then led the way into the house and up into the attic,
where she reached behind the rafters.

"Look hyeh," she said, and she pulled into sight the fishing-pole
and the old bow and arrow that Jason had given Mavis years and
years ago.

"She fetched 'em over when I wasn't hyeh an' HID 'em."

Slyly the mother watched her son's face, and though Jason said
nothing, she got her reward when she saw him color faintly. She
was too wise to say anything more herself, nor did she show any
consciousness when the three were together in the porch, nor make
any move to leave them alone. The two women went to their work
again, and while Mavis asked nothing, the mother plied Jason with
questions about Colonel and Mrs. Pendleton and Marjorie and Gray,
and had him tell about his graduating speech and Commencement Day.
The girl listened eagerly, though all the time her eyes were fixed
on her busy fingers, and when Jason told that Gray would most
likely come back to the hills, now that his father would get well,
she did not even lift her eyes and the calm of her face changed
not at all.

A little later Jason started back over to the mines. From the
corner of the yard he saw the path he used to follow when he was
digging for his big seam of coal. He passed his trysting-place
with Mavis on top of the spur, walled in now, as then, with laurel
and rhododendron. Again he felt the same pang of sympathy when he
saw her own cabin on the other side, tenanted now by negro miners.
Together their feet had beat every road, foot-path, trail, the
rocky bed of every little creek that interlaced in the great green
cup of the hills about him. So that all that day he walked with
memories and Mavis Hawn; all that day it was good to think that
his mother's home was hers, that he would find her there when his
day's work was done, and that she would be lonesome no more. And
it was a comfort when he went down the spur before sunset to see
her in the porch, to get her smile of welcome that for all her
calm sense of power seemed shy, to see her moving around the
house, helping his mother in the kitchen, and, after the old way,
waiting on him at the table. Jason slept in the loft of his
childhood that night, and again he pulled out the old bow and
arrow, bandling them gently and looking at them long. From his bed
he could look through the same little window out on the night. The
trees were full-leafed and as still as though sculptured from the
hill of broken shadows and flecks of moonlight that had paled on
their way through thin mists just rising. High from the tree-
trunks came the high vibrant whir of toads, the calls of katydids
were echoing through forest aisles, and from the ground crickets
chirped modestly upward. The peace and freshness and wildness of
it all! Ah, God, it was good to be home again!




XLV

Next day Jason carried over to Mavis and his mother the news of
the death of Colonel Pendleton, and while Mavis was shocked she
asked no question about Gray. The next day a letter arrived from
Gray saying he would not come back to the hills--and again Mavis
was silent. A week later Jason was made assistant superintendent
in Gray's place by the president of Morton Sanders' coal company,
and this Jason knew was Gray's doing. He had refused to accept the
stock Gray had offered him, and Gray was thus doing his best for
him in another way. Moreover, Jason was to be quartered in Gray's
place at the superintendent's little cottage, far up the ravine in
which the boy had unearthed the great seam of coal, a cottage that
had been built under Gray's personal supervision and with a free
rein, for it must have a visitor's room for any officer or
stockholder who might come that way, a sitting-room with a wood
fireplace, and Colonel Pendleton had meant, moreover, that his son
should have all the comfort possible. Jason dropped on the little
veranda under a canopy of moon-flowers, exultant but quite
overcome. How glad and proud his mother would be--and Mavis. While
he sat there Arch Hawn rode by, his face lighted up with a
humorous knowing smile.

"How about it?" he shouted.

"D'you have anything to do with this?"

"Oh, just a leetle."

"Well, you won't be sorry."

"Course not. What'd I tell ye, son? You go in now an' dig it out.
And say, Jason--" He pulled his horse in and spoke seriously:
"Keep away from town till little Aaron gets over his spree. You
don't know it, but that boy is a fine feller when he's sober.
Don't you shoot first now. So long."

The next day Jason ran upon Babe Honeycutt shambling up the creek.
Babe was fearless and cordial, and Jason had easily guessed why.

"Babe, my mammy told you something."

The giant hesitated, started to lie, but nodded assent.

"You haven't told anybody else?"

"Nary a livin' soul."

"Well, don't."

Babe shuffled on, stopped, called Jason, and came back close
enough to whisper:

"I had all I could do yestiddy to keep little Aaron from comin' up
hyeh to the mines to look for ye."

Then he shuffled away. Jason began to get angry now. He had no
intention of shooting first or shooting at all except to save his
own life, but he went straightway over the spur to get his pistol,
Mavis saw him buckling it on, he explained why, and the girl sadly
nodded assent.

Jason flung himself into his work now with prodigious energy. He
never went to the county-seat, was never seen on the river road on
the Honeycutt side of the ancient dead-line, and the tale-bearers
on each side proceeded to get busy again. The Hawns heard that
Jason had fled from little Aaron the morning Jason had gone back
for his Commencement in the Blue-grass. The Honeycutts heard that
Aaron had been afraid to meet Jason when he returned to the
county-seat. Old Jason and old Aaron were each cautioning his
grandson to put an end to the folly, and each was warning his
business representative in town with commercial annihilation if he
should be discovered trying to bring on the feud again. On the
first county-court day Jason had to go to court, and the meeting
came. The town was full with members of both factions, armed and
ready for trouble. Jason had ridden ahead of his grandfather that
morning and little Aaron had ridden ahead of his. Jason reached
town first, and there was a stir in the Honeycutt hotel and store.
Half an hour later there was a stir among the Hawns, for little
Aaron rode by. A few minutes later Aaron came toward the Hawn
store, in the middle of the street, swaggering. Jason happened at
that moment to be crossing the same street, and a Hawn shouted
warning.

Jason looked up and saw Aaron coming. He stopped, turned, and
waited until Aaron reached for his gun. Then his own flashed, and
the two reports sounded as one. One black lock was clipped from
Jason's right temple and a little patch flew from the left
shoulder of Aaron's coat. To Jason's surprise Aaron lowered his
weapon and began working at it savagely with both hands, and while
Jason waited, Aaron looked up.

"Shoot ahead," he said sullenly; "it's a new gun and it won't
work."

But no shot came and Aaron looked up again, mystified and glaring,
but Jason was smiling and walking toward him.

"Aaron, there are two or three trifling fellows on our side who
hate you and are afraid of you. You know that, don't you?"

"Yes."

"Well, the same thing is true about me of two or three men on your
side, isn't it?"

"Yes."

"They've been carrying tales from one side to the other. I've
never said anything against you."

Aaron, genuinely disbelieving, stared questioningly for a moment--
and believed.

"I've never said anything against you, either."

"I believe you. Well, do you see any reason why we should be
shooting each other down to oblige a few cowards?"

"No, by God, I don't."

"Well, I don't want to die and I don't believe you do. There are a
lot of things I want to do and a lot that you want to do. We want
to help our own people and our own mountains all we can, and the
best thing we can do for them and for ourselves is to stop this
feud."

"It's the God's truth," said Aaron solemnly, but looking still a
little incredulous.

"You and I can do it."

"You bet we can!"

"Let's do it. Shake hands."

And thus, while the amazed factions looked on the two modern young
mountaineers, eye to eye and hand gripping hand, pledged death to
the long warfare between their clans and a deathless friendship
between themselves. And a little later a group of lounging Hawns
and Honeycutts in the porches of the two ancient hostile hotels
saw the two riding out of town side by side, unarmed, and on their
way to bring old Aaron and old Jason together and make peace
between them.

The coincidence was curious, but old Aaron, who had started for
town, met old Jason coming out of a ravine only a mile from town,
for old Jason, with a sudden twitch of memory, had turned to go up
a hollow where lived a Hawn he wanted to see and was coming back
to the main road again. Both were dim-sighted, both wore
spectacles, both of their old nags were going at a walk, making no
noise in the deep sand, and only when both horses stopped did
either ancient peer forward and see the other.

"Well, by God," quavered both in the same voice. And each then
forgot his mission of peace, and began to climb, grunting, from
his horse, each hitching it to the fence.

"This is the fust time in five year, Jason Hawn, you an' me come
together, an' you know whut I swore I'd do," cackled old Aaron.

Old Jason's voice was still deep.

"Well, you've got yo' chance now, you old bag o' bones! Them two
boys o' ours air all right but thar hain't no manhood left in this
hyeh war o' ours. Hit's just a question of which hired feller gits
the man who hired the other feller. We'll fight the ole way. You
hain't got a knife--now?"

"Damn yo' hide!" cried old Aaron. "Do you reckon I need hit agin
you?" He reached in his pocket and tossed a curved-bladed weapon
into the bushes.

"Well," mumbled old Jason, "I can whoop you, fist an' skull, right
now, just as I allers have done."

Both were stumbling back into the road now.

"You air just as big a liar as ever, Jase, an' I'm goin' to prove
it."

And then the two tottering old giants squared off, their big,
knotted, heavily veined fists revolving around each other in the
old-fashioned country way. Old Jason first struck the air, was
wheeled around by the force of his own blow, and got old Aaron's
fist in the middle of the back. Again the Hawn struck blindly as
he turned, and from old Aaron's grunt he knew he had got him in
the stomach. Then he felt a fist in his own stomach, and old Aaron
cackled triumphantly when he heard the same tell-tale grunt.

"Oh, yes, dad--blast ye! Come on agin, son."

They clinched, and as they broke away a blind sweep from old Jason
knocked Aaron's brassrimmed spectacles from his nose.

They fell far apart, and when old Jason advanced again, peering
forward, he saw his enemy silently pawing the air with his back
toward him, and he kicked him.

"Here I am, you ole idgit!"

"Stop!" shouted old Aaron, "I've lost my specs."

"Whar?"

"I don't know," and as he dropped to his knees old Jason bent too
to help him find his missing eyes. Then they went at it again--and
the same cry came presently from old Jason.

"Stop, I've lost mine!"

And both being out of breath sat heavily down in the sand, old
Jason feeling blindly with his hands and old Aaron peering about
him as far as he could see. And thus young Jason and young Aaron
found them, and were utterly mystified until the old men rose
creakily and got ready for battle again--when both spurred forward
with a shout of joy, and threw themselves from their horses.

"Go for him, grandpap!" shouted each, and the two old men turned.

"Uncle Aaron," shouted Jason, "I bet you can lick him!"

"He can't do it, Uncle Jason!" shouted Aaron.

Each old man peered at his own grandson, dumbfounded. Neither was
armed, both were helpless with laughter, and each was urging on
the oldest enemy of his clan against his own grandfather. The face
of each old man angered, and then both began to grin sheepishly;
for both were too keen-witted not to know immediately that what
both really wished for had come to pass.

"Aaron," said old Jason, "the boys have ketched us. I reckon we
better call this thing a draw."

"All right," piped old Aaron, "we're a couple o' ole fools
anyhow."

So they shook hands. Each grandson helped the other's grandfather
laughingly on his horse. and the four rode back toward town. And
thus old Jason and old Aaron, side by side in front, and young
Jason and young Aaron, side by side behind, appeared to the
astonished eyes of Hawns and Honeycutts on the main street of the
county-seat. Before the Honeycutt store they stopped, and old
Aaron called his henchman into the middle of the street and spoke
vigorous words that all the Honeycutts could hear. Then they rode
to the Hawn store, and old Jason called his henchman out and spoke
like words that all the Hawns could hear. And each old man ended
his discourse with a profane dictum that sounded like the vicious
snap of a black-snake whip.

"By God, hit's GOT to stop."'

Then turned the four again and rode homeward, and for the first
time in their lives old Aaron and young Aaron darkened the door of
old Jason's house, and in there the jug went round the four of
them, and between the best of the old order and the best of the
new, final peace was cemented at last.

Jason reached the mines a little before dusk, and the old circuit
rider lifted his eyes heavenward that his long prayer had been
answered at last and the old woman rocked silently back and forth-
-her old eyes dimmed with tears.

Then Jason hurried over the hill and took to his mother a peace
she had not known even in her childhood, and a joy that she never
dreamed would be hers while she lived--that her boy was safe from
blood-oaths, a life of watchful terror, and constant fear of
violent death. In Mavis's eyes was deep content when the moon rose
on the three that night. Jason stayed a while after his mother was
gone within, and, as they sat silently together, he suddenly took
one of her hands in both his own and kissed it, and then he was
gone. She watched him, and when his form was lost in the shadows
of the trees she lifted that hand to her own lips.




XLVI

Winter came and passed swiftly. Throughout it Jason was on the
night shift, and day for him was turned into night. Throughout it
Mavis taught her school, and she reached home just about the time
Jason was going to work, for school hours are long in the hills.
Meanwhile, the railroad crept through the county-seat up the
river, and the branch line up the Hawn creek to the mines was
ready for it. And just before the junction was made, there was an
event up that creek in which Mavis shared proudly, for the work in
great part was Jason's own. Throughout the winter, coke-ovens had
sprung up like great beehives along each side of the creek, and
the battery of them was ready for firing. Into each, shavings and
kindlings were first thrust and then big sticks of wood. Jason
tied packing to the end of a pole, saturated it with kerosene,
lighted it, and handed it to Mavis. Along the batteries men with
similar poles waited for her. The end of the pole was a woolly
ball of oily flames, writhing like little snakes when she thrust
it into the first oven, and they leaped greedily at the waiting
feast and started a tiny gluttonous roar within. With a yell a
grinning darky flourished another mass of little flames at the
next oven, and down the line the balls of fire flashed in the dusk
and disappeared, and Mavis and Jason and his mother stood back
and. waited. Along came eager men throwing wood and coal into the
hungry maws above them. Little black clouds began to belch from
them and from the earth packed around, and over them arose white
clouds of steam. The swirling smoke swooped down the sides of the
batteries and drove the watching three farther back. Flames burst
angrily from the oven doors and leaped like yellow lightning up
through the belching smoke. Behind them was the odor of the woods,
fresh and damp and cool, and the sound of the little creek in its
noisy way over rocks and stray fallen timbers. Down from the mines
came mules with their drivers, their harness rattling as they
trotted past, and from the houses poured women and children to see
the first flaming signs of a great industry. And good cheer was in
the air like wine, for times were good, and work and promise of
work a-plenty. Exultant Jason felt a hand on his shoulder, and
turned to find the big superintendent smiling at him.

"You go on the day shift after this," he said. "Go to bed now."

The boy's eyes glistened, for he had been working for forty-eight
hours, and with Mavis and his mother he walked up the hill. At the
cottage he went inside and came out with a paper in his hand which
he handed to Mavis without a word. Then he went back and with his
clothes on fell across his bed.

Mavis walked down the spur with her step-mother home. She knew
what the paper contained for two days before was the date fixed
for the wedding-day of Marjorie and Gray Pendleton, and Gray had
written Jason and Marjorie had written her, begging them both to
come. By the light of a lamp she read the account, fulsome and
feminine, aloud: the line of carriages and motor-cars sweeping
from the pike gate between two rows of softly glowing, gently
swinging Japanese lanterns, up to the noble old Southern home
gleaming like a fairy palace on the top of a little hill; the gay
gathering of the gentlefolk of the State; the aisle made through
them by two silken white ribbons and leading to the rose-canopied
altar; the coming down that aisle of the radiant bride with her
flowers, and her bridesmaids with theirs; the eager waiting of the
young bridegroom, the bending of two proud, sunny heads close
together, and the God-sealed union of their hearts and lives. And
then the silent coming of a great gleaming motor-car, the showers
of rice, the showering chorus of gay good wishes and good-bys, and
then they shot away in the night for some mysterious bourne of the
honeymoon. And behind them the dance went on till dawn. The paper
dropped in Mavis's lap, and Martha Hawn sighed and rose to get
ready for bed.

"My, but some folks is lucky!"

On the porch Mavis waited up awhile, with no envy in her heart.
The moon was soaring over the crest of the Cumberland, and
somewhere, doubtless, Marjorie and Gray, too, had their eyes
lifted toward it. She looked toward the little gap in the western
hills where Gray's star had gone down.

"I'm so glad they're happy," she whispered.

The moon darkened just then, and beyond and over the dark spur
flashed a new light in the sky, that ran up the mounting clouds
like climbing roses of flame. The girl smiled happily. Under it
tired Jason was asleep, but the light up there was the work of his
hands below, and it hung in the heavens like a pillar of fire.




XLVII

Sitting on the porch next morning, Mavis and Martha Hawn saw Jason
come striding down the spur.

"I'm taking a holiday to-day," he said, and there was a light in
his eyes and a quizzical smile on his face that puzzled Mavis, but
the mother was quick to understand. It was Saturday, a holiday,
too, for Mavis, and a long one, for her school had just closed
that her children might work in the fields. Without a word, but
still smiling to himself, Jason went out on the back porch, got a
hoe, and disappeared behind the garden fence. He came back
presently with a tin can in his hands and held it out to Mavis.

"Let's go fishing," he said.

While Mavis hesitated the mother, with an inward chuckle, went
within and emerged with the bow and arrow and an old fishing-pole.

"Mebbe you'll need 'em," she said dryly.

Mavis turned scarlet and Jason, pretending bewilderment, laughed
happily.

"That's just what we do need," he said, with no further surprise,
no question as to how those old relics of their childhood happened
to be there. His mother's diplomacy was crude, but he was grateful
for it, and he smiled at her understandingly.

So, like two children again, they set off, as long ago, over the
spur, down the branch, across the road below the mines, and down
into the deep bowl, filled to the brim with bush and tree, and to
where the same deep pool lay in deep shadows asleep--Jason
striding ahead and Mavis his obedient shadow once more--only this
time Jason would look back every now and then and smile. Nor did
he drop her pole on the ground and turn ungallantly to his bow and
arrow, but unwound the line, baited her hook, cast it, and handed
her the pole. As of yore, he strung his bow, which was a
ridiculous plaything in his hands now, and he peered as of yore
into every sunlit depth, but he turned every little while to look
at the quiet figure on the bank, not squatted with childish
abandon, but seated as a maiden should be, with her skirts drawn
decorously around her pretty ankles. And all the while she felt
him looking, and her face turned into lovely rose, though her
shining eyes never left the pool that mirrored her below. Only her
squeal was the same when, as of yore, she flopped a glistening
chub on the bank, and another and another. Nor did he tell her she
was "skeerin' the big uns" and set her to work like a little
slave, but unhooked each fish and put on another worm. And only
was Jason little Jason once more when at last he saw the waving
outlines of an unwary bass in the depths below. Again Mavis saw
him crouch, saw again the arrow drawn to his actually paling
cheek, heard again the rushing hiss through the air and the
burning hiss into the water, and saw a bass leap from the
convulsed surface. Only this time there was no headless arrow left
afloat, for, with a boyish yell, Jason dragged his squirming
captive in. This time Jason gathered the twigs and built the fire
and helped to clean the fish. And when all was ready, who should
step forth with a loud laugh of triumph from the bushes but the
same giant--Babe Honeycutt!

"I seed you two comin' down hyeh," he shouted. "Hit reminded me o'
ole times. I been settin' thar in the bushes an' the smell o' them
fish might' nigh drove me crazy. An' this time, by the jumpin'
Jehosiphat, I'm a-goin' to have my share."

Babe did take his share, and over his pipe grew reminiscent.

"I'm mighty glad you didn't git me that day, Jason," he said, with
another laugh, "an' I reckon you air too now that--"

He stopped in confusion, for Jason had darted him a warning
glance. So confused was he, indeed, that he began to feel suddenly
very much in the way, and he rose quickly, and with a knowing look
from one to the other melted with a loud laugh into the bushes
again.

"Now, wasn't that curious?" said Jason, and Mavis nodded silently.

All the time they had been drifting along the backward current of
memories, and perhaps it was that current that bore them
unconsciously along when they rose, for unconsciously Jason went
on toward the river, until once more they stood on the little
knoll whence they had first seen Gray and Marjorie ride through
the arched opening of the trees. Hitherto, speech had been as
sparse between them as it had been that long-ago day, but here
they looked suddenly into each other's eyes, and each knew the
other's thought.

"Are you sorry, Mavis?"

She flushed a little.

"Not now"; and then shyly, "are you?"

"Not now," repeated Jason.

Back they went again, lapsing once more into silence, until they
came again to the point where they had started to part that day,
and Mavis's fear had led him to take her down the dark ravine to
her home. The spirals of smoke were even rising on either side of
the spur from Jason's cottage and his mother's home, and both high
above were melting into each other and into the drowsy haze that,
veiled the face of the mountain. Jason turned quickly, and the
subdued fire in his eyes made the girl's face burn and her eyes
droop.

"Mavis," he said huskily, "do you remember what I said that day
right here?"

And then suddenly the woman became the brave.

"Yes, Jasie," she said, meeting his eyes unflinchingly now and
with a throb of desire to end his doubt and suffering quickly:

"And I remember what we both DID--once."

She looked down toward the old circuit rider's house at the forks
of the road, and Jason's hand and lip trembled and his face was
transfigured with unbelievable happiness.

"Why, Mavis--I thought you--Gray--Mavis, will you, will you?"

"Poor Jasie," she said, and almost as a mother to a child who had
long suffered she gently put both arms around his neck, and, as
his arms crushed her to him, lifted her mouth to meet his.

Two hours it took Jason to go to town and back, galloping all the
way. And then at sunset they walked together through the old
circuit rider's gate and to the porch, and stood before the old
man hand in hand.

"Me an' Mavis hyeh want to git married," said Jason, with a
jesting smile, and the old man's memory was as quick as his humor.

"Have ye got a license?" he asked, with a serious pursing of his
lips. "You got to have a license, an' hit costs two dollars an'
you got to be a man."

Jason smilingly pulled a paper from his pockets, and Mavis
interrupted:

"He's MY man."

"Well, he will be in a minute--come in hyeh."

The old circuit rider's wife met them at the door and hugged them
both, and when they came out on the porch again, there was Jason's
mother hurrying down the spur and calling to them with a half-
tearful laugh of triumph.

"I knowed it--oh, I knowed it."

The news spread swiftly. Within half an hour the big
superintendent was tumbling his things from the cottage into the
road, for his own family was coming, he explained to Jason's
mother, and he needed a larger house anyway. And so Babe Honeycutt
swung twice down the spur on the other side and up again with
Mavis's worldly goods on his great shoulders, while inside the
cottage Martha Hawn and the old circuit rider's wife were as
joyously busy as bees. On his last trip Mavis and Jason followed,
and on top of the spur Babe stopped, cocked his ear, and listened.
Coming on a slow breeze up the ravine from the river far below was
the long mellow blast of a horn.

"'I God," laughed Babe triumphantly, "ole Jason's already heerd
it."

And, indeed, within half an hour word came that the old man must
have the infair at his house that night, and already to all who
could hear he had blown welcome on the wind.

So, at dusk, when Jason, on the circuit rider's old nag, rode
through camp with Mavis on a pillion behind in laughing acceptance
of the old pioneer custom, women and children waved at them from
doorways and the miners swung their hats and cheered them as they
passed. There was an old-fashioned gathering at the old Hawn home
that night. Old Aaron and young Aaron and many Honeycutts were
there; the house was thronged, fiddles played old tunes for nimble
feet, and Hawns and Honeycutts ate and drank and made merry until
the morning sun fanned its flames above the sombre hills.

But before midnight Jason and Mavis fared forth pillion-fashion
again. Only, Jason too rode sidewise every now and then that he
might clasp her with one arm and kiss her again and again under
the smiling old moon. Through the lights and noise of the mighty
industry that he would direct, they passed and climbed on.

Soon only lights showed that their grimy little working world was
below. Soon they stood on the porch of their own little home. To
them there the mighty on-sweeping hills sent back their own peace,
God-guarded and never to be menaced by the hand of man. And there,
clasped in each other's arms, their spirits rushed together, and
with the spiral of smoke from their own hearthstones, went upward.




XLVIII

Gently that following midsummer the old president's crutch thumped
the sidewalk leading to the college. Between the pillars of the
gateway he paused, lifted his undimmed keen blue eyes, and more
gently still the crutch thumped on the gravelled road as he passed
slowly on under the trees. When he faced the first deserted
building, he stopped quite still. The campus was deserted and the
buildings were as silent as tombs. That loneliness he had known
many, many years; but there was a poignant sorrow in it now that
was never there before, for only that morning he had turned over
the reins of power into a pair of younger hands. The young men and
young women would come again, but now they would be his no longer.
There would be the same eager faces, dancing eyes, swift coming
and going, but not for him. The same cries of greeting, the tramp
of many feet, shouts from the playgrounds-but not for his ears.
The same struggle for supremacy in the class-room--but not for his
favor and his rewarding hand. That hand had all but upraised each
building, brick by brick and stone by stone. He had started alone,
he had fought alone, and in spite of his Scotch shrewdness,
business sagacity, indomitable pluck and patience, and a
nationwide fame for scholarship, the fight had been hard and long.
He had won, but the work was yet unfinished, and it was his no
longer. For a little while he stood there, and John Burnham,
coming from his class-room with a little bag of books, saw the
still figure on crutches and paused noiselessly on the steps. He
saw the old scholar's sensitive mouth quiver and his thin face
wrenched with pain, and he guessed the tragedy of farewell that
was taking place. He saw the old president turn suddenly, limp
toward the willow-trees, and Burnham knew that he could not bear
at that moment to pass between those empty beloved halls. And
Burnham watched him move under the willows along the edge of the
quiet pond, watched him slowly climbing a little hill on the other
side of the campus, and then saw him wearily pass through his own
gate-home. He wished that the old scholar could know how much
better he had builded than he knew; could know what an exchange
and clearing-house that group of homely buildings was for the
human wealth of the State. And he wondered if in the old
thoroughbred's heart was the comfort that his spirit would live on
and on to help mould the lives of generations unborn, who might
perhaps never hear his name.

There was a youthful glad light in John Burnham's face when he
turned his back on the deserted college, for he, too, was on his
way at last to the hills--and St. Hilda. As he swept through the
Blue-grass he almost smiled upon the passing fields. The
betterment of the tobacco troubles was sure to come, and only that
summer the farmer was beginning to realize that in the end the
seed of his blue-grass would bring him a better return than the
leaf of his troublesome weed-king. There were groaning harvests
that summer and herds of sheep and hogs and fat cattle. There was
plenty of wheat and rye and oats and barley and corn yet coming
out of the earth, and, as woodland after woodland reeled past his
window, he realized that the trees were not yet all gone. Perhaps
after all his beloved Kentucky would come back to her own, and
there was peace in his grateful heart.

Two nights later, sitting on the porch of her little log cabin, he
told St. Hilda about Gray and Marjorie, as she told him about
Mavis and Jason Hawn. Gray and Jason had gone back, each to his
own, having learned at last what Mavis and Marjorie, without
learning, already knew--that duty is to others rather than self,
to life rather than love. But John Burnham now knew that in the
dreams of each girl another image would live always; just as
always Jason would see another's eyes misty with tears for him and
feel the comforting clutch of a little hand, while in Gray's heart
a wood-thrush would sing forever.

And, looking far ahead, both could see strong young men hurrying
up from the laggard Blue-grass into the lagging hills and strong
young men hurrying down from them, and could hear the heart of the
hills beating as one with the heart of the Bluegrass, and both
beating as one with the heart of the world.

THE END





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