hyar ter tell ye thet I knowed how ye felt, an' thet I didn't see no reason why you an' me hed ter quarrel. I come over hyar ter see Dawn, because I promised I wouldn't try ter see her whilst she stayed down thar at the school an' because I wants ter see her an' I 'lows ter do hit. out thar in ther

Will ye lay aside yore gun an' go road whar hit hain't on yore own ground, an' let me tell ye thet ye lied, when ye slurred my folks?"

The two boys stripped off their coats, in guarantee that neither had hidden a weapon. Then while the girl who was really no longer a girl, turned back into the fire-lit cabin and threw herself face downward on her feather bed they silently crossed the stile into the road, and Milt turned to repeat, "Jeb, thet war a lie ye spoke, an' I wants ye ter fight me fa'r, fist an' skull, an' when we gits through ef ye feels like hit we'll shake hands. You an' me ain't got no cause ter quarrelbarrin' what ye jest said an' we're goin' ter settle thet right now."

And so the boy in each of them which was the manlier part of each, came to the surface, and through a bitter and long-fought battle of fists and wrestling, in which both of them rolled in the dust, and each of them obstinately refused to say "enough," they submitted their long-fostered hostility to one fierce debate. At last as the two of them sat panting and bloodied there in the road it was Jeb who rose and held out his hand.

un

"So fur es the two of us goes, Milt," he said, " less ther war busts loose argin I reckon we kin be friendly."

Together they rose and recrossed the stile and washed

their grimed faces in the same tin pan by the door. Dawn looked from one to the other, and Jeb said in his capacity as host, "Milt, set yoreself a cheer. I reckon ye'd better stay all night. Hit's most too fur ter ride back ter yore own house."

And so, though they did not realize it, the two youths who were to stand some day near the heads of the two factions, had set a new precedent and had fought without guns, as men had fought before the feud began.

Jeb kicked off his shoes and "lay down" and before the flaming logs sat the Havey girl and the McBriar boy, talking low-voiced and long into the night.

WHE

CHAPTER XXIV

HEN winter has come and settled down for its long siege in the Cumberlands, human life

shrinks and shrivels into a shivering wretchedness and a spirit of dreariness steals into the human heart.

The gaunt, gray hills reek and loom, sticky and deformed, between the snows and thaws. Roads become impassable mires and the total quarantine has begun. In dark cabins hearts given to brooding do little else but brood and Nature herself has no clarion of outer cheer with which to break the dangerous soul-cramping monotony.

The house of Old Milt McBriar was not so dark and cheerless a hovel as the houses of his lesser neighbors, but as that winter closed in, his heart was very bitter and his thoughts very black. In a round-about way he had learned of Young Milt's visit to the McNash cabin. His son was the apple of his eye and now he was seeing him form embryonic affiliations with the people of his enemy. Young Milt had visited Dawn; he had watched with Anse Havey. The father had always taken a natural pride in the honesty that gleamed from his son's alert eyes, and the one person from whom he had concealed his own ways of guile and deceit most studiously was the lad who would some day be leader in his stead. There were few things that this old in

triguer feared, but one there was, and now it was tracing lines of care and anxiety in the visage that had always been so mask-like and imperturbable. If his son should ever look past his outward self and catch a glimpse of the inner man, the father knew that he would not be able to sustain the scorn of those younger eyes. So while the lad, who had gone back to college in Lexington, conned his books, his father sat before the blaze of his hearth, with his pipe tight-clamped between his teeth and his heart festering in his breast and his mind dangerously active.

The beginnings of all the things which he deplored, and meant to punish, went back to the establishment of a school with a "fotched-on " teacher. Had Dawn McNash not come there his boy's feet would not have gone wandering westward over the ridge, straying out of partisan paths. The slimness of her body, the lure of her violet eyes and the dusky meshes of her dark hair had led his own son to guard the roof that sheltered her against the hand of arson that the father had hired.

But most of all Anse Havey was responsible - Anse Havey who had persuaded his son to make common cause with his enemy. For that Anse Havey must die.

Heretofore Old Milt had struck only at lesser men, fearing the retribution of too audacious a crime, but now his venom was acute and even such grave considerations as the danger of a holocaust must not halt its appeasement.

Still the mind of Milt McBriar, the elder, had worked long in intrigue and even now it could not follow a direct line. Bad Anse must not be shot down in the road. His taking-off must be accomplished by a shrewder

method and one not directly traceable to so palpable a motive as his own hatred. Such a plan his brain was working out, but for its execution he needed a hand of craft and force- such a hand as only Luke Thixton could supply - and Luke was out West.

It was not his intention to rush hastily into action. Some day he would go down to Lexington and Luke should come East to meet him. There, a hundred and thirty miles from the hills, the two of them would arrange matters to his own satisfaction.

Roger Malcolm had gone back East and he had not after all gone back with a conqueror's triumph. He was now discussing in directors' meetings plans looking to a titanic grouping of interests which were to focalize on these hills and later to bring developments. The girl's school was gradually making itself felt and each day saw small classes at the desk and blackboards; small classes that were growing larger.

Now that Milt had laid the ground work of his plans he was making the field fallow by a seeming of general beneficence. His word had gone out along the creeks and branches and into the remote coves of his territory that it "wouldn't hurt folks none ter give their children a little l'arnin'."

In response to that hint they trooped in from the east wherever the roads could be traveled. Among those who "hitched an' lighted" at the fence were not only parents who brought their children, but those who came impelled by that curiosity which lurks in lonely lives. There were men in jeans and hickory shirts; women in gay shawls and linsey woolsey and calico; people from "back of beyond," and the girl felt her