unless some one should venture to smile or frown at

them. They were showing themselves free-born citizens and a law to themselves and they were all full of whiskey and quarrel.

They passed the school and their shots and shouts went around the turn of the road. At their head rode the sullen boy who studied with passionate ardor and zest.

Juanita sighed, but Bad Anse only smiled.

"Let 'em be," he said philosophically. "They'll sober up after while. Just be right glad at the progress ye've made "

"Anse," she suddenly exclaimed, "you must counsel your people not to take their guns away."

"Me!" he exclaimed. "Ain't ye pushing our contract right far? When did I ever stand for clippin' an eagle's claws?"

And yet the feud-leader did cause a word to go from cabin to cabin, to the effect that the public bearing of arms was now unnecessary, and showed a lack of confidence in Young Milt McBriar, who was no longer an enemy, but a friend.

"Take your rifles and hang 'em up at the school, boys," he suggested to a group one day on the roadside. "As long as they're there they'll be out of mischief."

After he had spoken and ridden on several heads shook dubiously.

"Looks like Anse is changin' right smart," said one. "It beats me how some fellers let a woman lead 'em 'round."

"Ef a woman's leadin' him round," retorted a more

loyal defender, "no one else don't. I reckon hit hain't hardly becomin' fer none of ye folks ter criticise Anse Havey. As fer me I hangs my old rifle-gun up on the peg this same day, an' ef anybody's got any remarks ter make about hit, I'm ready ter listen."

In a few days the boy came back. He never alluded to his outbreak or breathed a word of apology, but he put the gun back in its place and once more attacked his books.

Sometimes a lad or older man, going out, would pause irresolute at the rack and eye his weapon covetously, but in the end he hearkened to counsel and left it there.

"What are you doing, Bruce?" inquired Juanita one day as she found a tow-headed lad of twenty standing before her shrine with a look of longing in his face.

"I was jest feelin' kinder lonesome withouten my rifle-gun," was the reply. "Hit used ter be my dad's an' hit's done some good work in hits day."

Juanita nodded and it was her smile rather than her words which proved disarming.

66

"Yes, I know," she sympathized, "but those days are over. These are days of peace."

The girl did not realize how much she was leaning on the strength of Anse Havey, how she depended on him for counsel and encouragement, which he gave not in behalf of the school, but because he was the schoolteacher's slave. She saw the little hospital rise on the hill and thought of what it would do, and she believed that Anse Havey must be, in his heart, converted, even though his mountain obstinacy withheld the admission.

Then while the roads and hillsides were joyous with spring came a squad of lads bearing transit and chain,

who begun running a tentative line through the land that Jim Fletcher had bought. Anse Havey watched them grimly with arms folded, but said no word until they came to the boundary of his own place. There he met them at the border. "Boys," he said, "ye mustn't cross that fence. This is my land an' I forbids ye."

Their foreman argued.

"We only want to take the measurements necessary to complete our line, Mr. Havey, we won't work any injury."

Anse shook his head.

"Come in, boys, an' eat with me an' make yourselves at home," he told them, "but leave your tools outside."

Men from the brick house patroled the fence line with rifles and the young men were forced to turn back.

But later they drew near the house of old Bob McGreeger, and he, stealing down to a place in the thicket of rhododendron, saw them perilously near the trickling stream which even then bore on its surface little kernels of yellow corn. Deeply and violently Old Bob swore as he drank, from his little blue keg, and when next day he saw them again he asked counsel of no man. He went down and crept close through the laurel, and as his old rifle spoke a school-boy from the Bluegrass fell dead in the creek bed.

A

CHAPTER XXXII

FTER that death, the first murder of an innocent outsider the war which Anse Havey had so long foreseen broke furiously and brought the orders of upland and lowland to the grip of bitter animosity.

Old McGreeger's victim had been young Roy Calvin, the son of Judge Calvin of Lexington and the name of Calvin in central Kentucky was one associated with the State's best traditions.

It had run, in a strong bright thread through the pattern of Kentucky's achievements and when news of the wanton assassination came home, the State awoke to a shock of horror. The infamy of the hills was screamed in echo to the mourning and the name of Bad Anse Havey was once more printed in large type.

Editorial and news column alluded to him as the patron saint of the lawless order, which made such outrages possible. Though Anse held his peace, Juanita saw lines of stoical sternness settling around the corners of his lips, and knew that he was silently burning with the injustice of reports which he pretended not to hear.

The men whose capital sought to wrest profit from the hills and whose employé had been slain, were quick to utilize this hue and cry of calumny.

They hurled themselves into their fight, for gaining possession of coveted land, and were not particular as to methods.

Jim Fletcher came and went constantly between the lowlands and highlands. He was all things to all men and in the hills he cursed the lowlander, but in the lowlands cursed the hills. Milt and Jeb and Anse rode constantly from cabin to cabin in their efforts to circumvent the adroit schemes of the mountain Judas who had sold his soul to the foreign syndicate.

Fletcher sought a foot-hold for capital to pierce fields acquired at the price of undeveloped land and then to take the profit of development. Anse sought to hold title until the sales could be on a fairer basis and so the issue was made up.

Capitalists like Malcolm who sat in directors' rooms launching a legitimate enterprise had no actual knowledge of the instrumentalities being employed on the real battle-field. Lawyers tried condemnation suits with indifferent success and then reached out their hands for a new weapon.

Back in the old days when Kentucky was not a State, but a County, land-patents had been granted by Virginia to men who had never claimed their property. For two hundred years other men who settled as pioneers had held undisturbed possession: they and their children's children. Now into the Courts piled multitudinous suits of eviction in the names of plaintiffs whose eyes had never seen the broken skyline of the Cumberlands. The purpose was deceit since it sought to drag through long and costly litigation pauper land-holders and to impose upon their poverty