Anse, I hain't askin' nothin' out of ye but jest one word. Jest speak one name, thet's all I needs.”

The mother had dropped back into her stupor again and her son stood there, his broganed feet wide apart and his whole body rigid and taut with passion.

Anse Havey once more shook his head.

"No, Jeb," he said quietly, "I don't know neither — not yet. The McBriars acted on suspicion—an' they killed the wrong man. Ye ain't seekin' to do likewise, be ye? Ye ain't quite twenty-one, Jeb, an' I'm the head of the family. I reckon ye'd better take counsel of me, boy. I ain't bent on deludin' ye an' ye can trust Ye've got to give me your hand, Jeb, that until we're plumb, everlastin❜ly sartain who got your pa, ye won't raise your gun against any man. I want ye to give me your solemn pledge on that."

me.

The boy sank down into his chair and bowed his head in his hands while his finger nails bit into his temples. Even Juanita Holland had felt the effect of Havey's wonderfully quieting voice and personality. Finally Jeb McNash raised his face.

"An' will ye give me yore hand, Anse Havey, thet if ye finds hit out afore I do, ye'll tell me thet man's name?

"I ain't never turned my back on a kinsman yet, Jeb," Anse gravely reminded him.

The boy nodded his acquiescence and hurriedly left the room. Juanita gently lifted Dawn's head from her lap and went forward to the hearth.

She had listened in silence, outraged at this callous talk and this private usurpation of powers of life and death. Now it seemed to her that to remain longer si

lent would be almost to become an accomplice. Something in her grew rigid. She saw the bent and lethargic figure of the bereaved wife and the stark, sheeted body of the feud's last victim. Before her stood the man more than any one else responsible for such conditions.

"Mr. Havey," she said as her voice grew coldly purposeful, with the ring of challenge, "I have been told that you did not mean to let me stay here; that you did not intend to give these poor children the chance to grow straight and decent." She paused because so much was struggling indignantly for utterance that she found the ordering of her words very difficult. And as she paused she heard him inquire in an ironically quiet voice, "Who told ye that?"

"Never mind who told me. I haven't come here to answer your questions. I came to these feud-cursed hills to fight conditions for which you stand as sponsor and patron saint. I came here to try to give the children release from ignorance- because ignorance makes them easy tools and dupes for murder lordslike you."

Again her tumult of spirit halted her and she heard Dawn sobbing with grief and fright on the bed.

"Are ye through?" inquired Anse Havey. His voice had the flinty quiet of cruelly repressed passion, and his face had whitened, but he had not moved.

"No, I'm not through," she went on with rising vehemence. "I came here seeking to interfere with no man's affairs . . . wishing only to give your people, without price, what they are entitled to . . . the light that all the rest of the world enjoys. I found

the community bound hand and foot in slavery to two men of a like stripe. I found their hirelings murdering each other from ambush. I'm only a woman, but I carry the credentials of decency and civilization. You two have everything else—everything except decency and civilization. . . . You and Milt McBriar!"

He had listened while the muscles of his jaws stood out in cramped tensity and the veins began to cord themselves on his temples. Now he said in a low voice between his teeth: "By God, don't liken me to Milt McBriar."

The girl laughed, a little hysterically and wildly, then swept on.

"I do liken you to Milt McBriar.

What in God's

He kills your

name is the difference between you? vassals and you kill his. Both of you do it by the proxy of hirelings and from ambuscade. In this house a man lies dead dead for no quarrel of his own, but because of your quarrel with Milt McBriar. But it seems that's not enough. You must enlist the son of the dead man into a life that will have the same end for him. . . . You bind him apprentice to your merciless code of murder." Her hands were clenched and her eyes burning with her tempest of rage. When she stopped speaking the man inquired once again: "Are ye through now?" But Juanita swept both hands out

and added:

"You have taken the boy very well. I mean to take the girl. I shall try to undo in her and in her children the evil you will do her brother.

to give the family one unblighted branch.

I shall try
Unless you

kill me I shall stay here and fight. I'll fight you and

your enemy, McBriar, alike because you are only two sides of the same coin. . . . I'll try to take the ground out from under your feet and leave you no standing room outside a State's prison. . . . Dawn shall learn the things that will, some day, set this country free.”

Mrs. McNash was looking up vaguely, but her thoughts were still far away, and this outpouring of speech near at hand meant little to her.

Juanita as she finished her wild peroration fell suddenly to trembling. Her strength seemed to have gone out with her words. Her knees, now that the effort was made, seemed too weak to support her, and for the first time in her life, as she looked into the face of Anse Havey, a face ominously blanched with rage, hurt pride and bitterness, she was physically afraid of

a man.

His eyes seemed to pierce her with the stabs of rapiers and in his quiet self-repression was something very ominous. For a moment he did not permit himself to speak, then he thrust a chair forward and said in a level and toneless sort of voice: "If ye're all through now, mebby ye'd better sit down. Such eloquence as that's liable ter tire ye out right smartly."

The girl made no move to take the chair, and Anse Havey came one step forward and pointed to it. This time his voice came quick and sharp like the crack of a mule whip. "Sit down I tell ye! I've got just a few words ter say my own self."

DA

CHAPTER XIV

AWN drew back on the quilted feather bed, her fingers twisting about one another in an excess

of nervous disquiet. Never before had she heard any one, man or woman, venture a word of rebellion or defiance to Bad Anse Havey. It had not occurred to her that there was in the world a person bold enough to do so. The mountain child felt almost as if she were a prize being fought for; fought for bitterly by two people whom she held in that high awe accorded to deities.

For a few moments Bad Anse Havey said nothing more and the Eastern girl dropped almost limply into the chair which he had pushed forward, while he, himself, paced the narrow length of the room, pausing once to gaze down at the rigid body of the dead man. At last he came and took his place squarely before her by the hearth with both hands thrust deep into his coat pockets. A long black lock fell over his forehead and he impatiently shook it back.

“Dawn,” he said finally, "I wish ye'd go to the door an' tell one of them fellers out there not ter let no one come in till I'm through."

"So you mean to keep me prisoner here while you attempt to intimidate me?" inquired the elder girl a little scornfully. "I suppose I might have expected that. It doesn't frighten me, however."