Evening Republican, Volume 20, Number 31, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 5 February 1916 — THE BATTLECRY [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

THE BATTLECRY

By CHARLES NEVILLE BUCK

AUTHOR <>f '’TKeCALLoftheCUMBERLANDS ILLUSTRATIONS CI). RHODES 'fc

COPY/UGrtrW BUCH I

SYNOPSIS. Juanita Holland, a Philadelphia young woman of wealth, on her journey with her guide. Good Anae Talbott, into the heart of the Cumberlanda to become a teacher of the mountain children, faints at the door of „Fletch McNash’s cabin. While resting there she overhears a talk between Bad Anse Havey, chief of his clan, and one of his henchmen that acquaints her with the Havey-Mcßriar feud. Juanita has an unprofitable talk with Bad Anse and tiny become antagonists. Cal Douglas of the Havey clan is on trial in Peril., for the murder of Noah Wyatt, a Mcßriar. In the night Juanita hears feudists ride past the. McNash cabin. Juanita and Dawn McNash become friends. Cal Douglas is acquitted. Nash Wyatt attempts to kill him but is himself killed by the Haveys. Juanita goes to live with the Widow Everson, whose boys are outside the feud. Milt Mcßriar, head of his clan,,meets Bad Anse there and disclaims responsibility for Wyatt’s attempt to kill Douglas. They declare a truce, under pressure from Good Anse Talbott. Juanita thinks she finds that Bad Anse is opposing her efforts to buy land and build a school. Milt Mcßriar breaks the truce by having Fletch McNash murdered. Jeb MeNash begs Bad Anse to teU him who killed his father, but is not told. Juanita' and Bad Anse further misuifllerstand each other. Bad Anse is bitter, but tells Juanita he does not fight women and will give her land if necessary. Juanita gets her land and cabin. Old Bob McGreegor incites Jeb McNash to murder Young Milt Mcßriar, but Jeb refrains as he is not sure Young Milt is the murderer. CHAPTER Xll—Continued. Dawn turned awaj and went stalking along the woodland path without a backward glance, and Milt followed at her heels, with Juanita, much amused, bringing up the rear. The easterner thought that these two young folks made a splendid pair, specimens of the best of the mountains, as yet unbroken by heavy harness. Then, as the younger girl passed under a swinging rope of Wild grapevine, stooping low, a tendril caught in her* hair. Without a word Young Milt bent forward and was freeing it, tingling through his pulses as his fingers touched the heavy black mass, but as soon as she was loose the girl sprang away and wheeled, her eyes blazing. “How dast ye tech me?” she demanded. panting with wrath. “How dast ye?” The boy laughed easily. "I dast do anything I wants," he told her. For a moment they stood looking at each other, then the girl dropped her eyes, but the anger had died out of them, and Juanita saw that, despite her condescending air, she was not displeased. Juanita, of course, knew nothing of Jeb’s suspicions that had led him into the laurel, but even without that information, when Young Milt met them more often than could be attributed to chance on their walks and fell into the habit of strolling back with them, strong forebodings began to trouble her And one morning these forebodings were verified in crisis for, while the youthful Mcßriar lounged near the porch of Juanita’s cabin talking with Dawn, another shadow fell across the sunlight: the shadow of Jeb McNash. He had come silently, and ft was only as Young Milt, whose back had been turned, shifted his position, that the two boys recognized each other. Juanita saw* the start with which Jeb’s figure stiffened and grew taut. Bbe saw his hands clench themselves and his face turn white as chalk; saw his chest rise and fall under heavy breathing that hissed through clenched teeth, and her own heart pounded with wild anxiety. But Mllt Mcßrlar’s face showed nothing. His father’s masklike calmness of feature had come down* to him, and as he read the meaning of the other boy’s atytude he merely nodded and said casually: “Howdy, Jeb." Jeb did not answer. He could not answer. He was training and punishing every fiber cruelly simply ini standing where he was and keeping his hands at bls sides. For a time —he remained stiff and white, breathing spasmodically; then, without a word, he turned and stalked away. That moon a horseman brought a note across the ridge, and as Juanita Holland read it she felt that all her dreams were crumbling—that the soul of them was paralyzed. . It was a brief note, written in a copybook hand, and it ran: I*ll have to ask you to send the McNash children over to my houae. Jeb doesn’t want them to tp consorting with the McBriars, and I can’t blame him. He is the . bead of his family. 1 Respectfully, e ANSE HAVEY. A stronger thing to Juanita Holland than the personal disappointment which had driven her to this work was —now her eager, fiery interest in the undertaking itself. In these months she had disabused herself of many prejudices. There remained that lingering one against the man with whom ■he had not made friends. The thing she had set out to do was a hundredfold more vital now than it hat been when it stood for carrying out a dead grandfather’s, wish. She ...... had been with these people in chijdblrth and death, in sickness and want; ■he had seen summer go from its tender beginning to a vagabond end with its tattered banners of ripened corn; autumn had biased and flared into high carnival. p' ♦ As young Jeb had turned on his heel

and stalked away, even before the coming of the note she knew what would happen, and what would happen not only in this instance, but in others like it. This would not be just losing Dawn, bad as that was. It would be paralysis and death to the school; ft would mean the leaving of every Havey boy and girl. So she stood there, and afterward said quietly: “Milt, 1 guess you’d better go," and Milt had gone gravely and unquestioningly, but with that in his eye which did not argue brightly for restoration of peace between his house and that of his enemy. ' When the two girls had gone together into the cabin Dawn stood with a face that blanched as she began to realize what it all meant, then slowly she stiffened and her hands, too. clenched and her eyes kindled. She came across to the chair into' which the older girl had dropped listlessly and, falling to her knees, seized both Juanita’s hands. She seized them tightly and fiercely, and her eyes were blazing and her voice broke from her lips in turgid vehemence. “I hain’t a-goin’ ter leave ye!” cried Dawn. “I hain’t a-goin’ ter do it." No word had been spoken of her leaving, but in this life they both knew that certain things bring certain results, and they were expecting a note from Bad Anse. “I hope not, dear,” said Juanita, but without conviction. . „ Then the mountain girl sprang up and became transformed. With her rigid figure and blazing eyes she seemed a torch burning with all the pent-up heritage of her past. “I tells ye 1 ain’t a-goin’ ter leave ye!” she protested, and her utterance swelled to fiery determination. “Es fer Milt Mcßriar, I wouldn’t spit on him. I hates him. I hates his murderin’ breed. I hates ’em like—” she paused a moment, then finished tumultuously " —like all hell. I reckon I’m es good a Havey as Jeb. I hain’t seen Jeb do nothin’ yit.” Again she paused, panting with passionate rage, then swept on while Juanita looked at her sudden metamorphosis into a fury and shuddered. ’’When I wasn’t nothin’ but a baby I fotched victuals ter my kinfolks a hidin’ out from revenuers. I passed right through men thet war a-trailtn’ ’em. I’ve done served my kinfolks afore, an’ I’d do hit ergin, but I reckon I hain’t a-goin’ ter let ’em take' me away from ye.” Juanita could think of only one step to take, so she sent Jerry Everson for Brother Talbott, whom she had seen riding toward the shack hamlet in the valley. “Thar hain’t but one thing thet ye kin do,” said Good Anse slowly when he and Juanita sat alone over the problem with the note of Havey command lying between them. "An’ I hain’t noways sartain thet hit’ll come ter

nothin’. Ye've got ter go over thar an’ have speech with Anse.” - Juanita drew back with a start of distaste and repulsion. Yet she had known this all along. "Ye see/* she heard the missionary saying, “thar’s jest one way Anse kin handle Jeb, an’ nobody else kain’t handle him at all. < He thinks he’s right I reckon es ye kin persuade Anse ter reason with him yell hev ter promise that Young Milt haln't a-goin' ter hang round hyar.” "I’d promise almost anything. I can’t give them up—l can’t —I can’t!’’ • “Es Anse didn’t perfect little Dawn from the Mcßrlars, Jeb would, ter a God’s certainty, kill YoungMllt” went miserably. „• "I don’t low ter blame ye none," he said slowly, almost apologetically, "but I’ve got ter say hit Hit’s a pity ye’ve seep fit ter say so many bitter things ter Anse. Mountain folks air mighty easy hurt in their pride, an* no one

hain’t nuver dared ter cross him "No," she cried bitterly, ’’he will wel come the chance to humiliate and to refuse my plea. He has been waiting for this; to see me come to him a sup pliant on bended knee, and then to laughat meand turn me sway.” She. paused-and added brokenly;’“And yet I’ve got to go to him in surrender—to be refused —but lILgo.” “Listen,” said the preacher, and his words carried that soft quality of pacification wliich (She had once or twice heard before. "Thar’s a heap worse fellers than Bad Anse Havey. Es ye could jest bev seed yore way ter treat him a leetle diff’rent —” “How could I?” demanded Juanita hotly. “How could 1 be friends with a murderer and keep my self-respect?” The brown-faced man looked up at her and spoke simply. “I’ve done kept mine." he said. The girl rose. “Will you go with me?” she asked a little weakly. ”1 don’t feel quite strong enough to go over there alone. While they are humbling me I would like to have a friend at hand. I think it would help a little." “I'm ready now," and so, with the man who had guided her on other missions, she set out to make what terms she could with the enemy she bad so stubbornly defied. It seemed an interminable journey, though they took the short cut of the foot-trail over the hills. The house that had come down to Anse Havey had been built almost a century before. it was originally' placed in a section so large that else-’ where it would have beer a domain —a tract held under the original Virginia grant. Since those days much of it had been parceled out as marriage portions to younger generations. Cabins that had once housed slaves, barns, a smoke-house, an icehouse, and a small hamlet of dependent shacks clustered about a clearing which had been put there rather to avoid surprise than to give space for gardening. The Havey of two generations ago had been something of a hermit scholar, and in his son had lurked a diminishing craze for books and an increasing passion for leadership. The feud had blazed to its fiercest heat in his day, and the father of Bad Anse Havey had been the first Bad Anse. His son had succeeded to the title as a right of heritage, and had been trained to wear it like a fighting man. Though he might be a whelp of the wolf breed, the boy was a strong whelp and one in whom slept latent possibilities and anomalous qualities, for in him broke out afresh the love of books. ■■ ■- -— ___ It might have surprised his newspaper biographers to know how deeply he had conned the few volumes on the rotting shelves of the brick house, or how deeply he had thought along some lines. It might have amazed them had they heard the fire and romance with which he quoted the wise counsel of the foolish Polonius. “Beware of entering a quarrel, but being in, so bear thee that the opposer may beware of thee.” > . As to entering a quarrel, it sufficed his logic that he had been born into it; that he had "heired” his hatreds. And because in these parts his father had held almost dictatorial powers, it had pleased him to send his son. just come to his majority, down to the state capital as a member of the legislature, and the son had gone to sit for a while among lawmakers. CHAPTER XITIT” In other years Bad Anse Havey remembered the days in that house when the voices of women and children had been raised in song and laughter. Then the family had gathered in the long winter evenings before the roaring backlogs, and spinning wheel and quilting frame had not yet gone to the cobwebs of the cockloft. But that was long ago. The quirter-century over which his memory traveled had brought changes even to the hills. The impalpable ghost of decay moves slowly, with no sound save the occasional click of a sagging door here and the snap ofa cord there, but in twenty-five years it moves —and an inbred generation comes to Impaired manhood. Since Bad Anse himself had returned from Frankfort his house had been tenanted only by men, and an atmosphere of grimness hung tn its shadows. A halfdozen unkempt and loutish kinsmen dwelt there with him, tilling the ground and ready to bear arms. More than once they had been needed. It was to this place that Juanfta Holland and the preacher were making their way on that October afternoon. - At the gate they encountered a solitary figure gazing stolidly out to the front, and when their coming roused it out of its gloomy reverie it turned and presented the scowling face of Jeb McNash. “Where air they?" he demanded wrathfully, wheeling upon the two arrivals, and then he repeated violently: “By heaven, where air they? Why hain’t ye done fotched Dawn and Jesse?" "Jeb,” said the missionary quietly, "we done come over hyar fust ter hev speech with Anse Havey. Whar’s he at?” “1 reckon he’s tn his house, but. ye hain’t answered my Question. I'm ther one for ye ter talk ter fust Hit’s my sister ye’ve done been sufferin’ ter consort with murderers, an’ hit’s me ye’ve got ter reckon with." Brother Talbo.tt.only nodded, “Bop." he gently assured him. "we alms ter talk with you, too. but I reckon ye hain’t got no call ter hinder us from havin' speech with Anse first.” For a moment Jeb stood dubious, then he jerked his bead toward the house. ' ; —~ -

"Go on In that, es ye sees flt. J batn’t got no license ter atop ye." be said curtly; "but don’t aim ter leave thout seeln’ me. too.” Several shaggy retainers were lounging on the front porch, but as Good Anse Talbott and Juanita turned in at the gate these henchmen disappeared inside They would all be there towltness her bumbling, thought the girl. It would please him to receive her with his jackal pack yelping derisively about him. Then she saw another figure emerge from the dark door to stand at the threshold, and the flush in her cheeks grew deeper. Bad Anse Havey stood; and waited, and when they reached the steps of the porch he came slowly fory ward and said gravely. "Come inside." He led the way. and they followed in silence. Juanita found herself in the largest room she had yet seen in the maintains —a room dark at'its corners despite a shaft of sun that slanted through a window and fell on a heavy table in a single band of light. On the table lay a litter of pipes, loose tobacco, cartridges and several books. Down the stripe of sunlight the dustmotes floated in pulverized gold, and the radiance fell upon a book which lay open, throwing it into relief, so that as the girl stood uncertainly near > the table she read at the top of a page the caption, "Plutarch’S Lives." But she caught her breath in relief, for the retainers had disappeared. Bad Anse stood just at the edge of the sun-shaft, with one side of his face lighted and the other dark. But if to the girl the whole picture was one of somber composition and color, 4 lt presented a different aspect to Bad Anse himself as the young mountaineer stood facing the door. "We’ve done come ter hev speech with ye. Anse,” Talbott began. "1 reckon ye know what hit’s erbouL" The Havey leader only nodded, and his -Steady eyes and straight mouthline did not alter their sternness of expression. He saw the stifled little gasp with which the girl read the ultimatum of his set face and the sudden mist of tears which, in spite of herself, blurred her eyes. He pushed forward a chair and gravely inquired: "Hadn’t ye better set down, ma’am?” She shook her head and raised one band, which trembled a little, to brush the hair out of her eyes. Palpably she was tiding to speak, and could not for the moment command her voice. But at last she got herself under control, and-her words came slowly and carefully. “Mr. Havey, I have very little reason to expect consideration from you. Even now, if it were a question of pleading for myself, 1 would die first, but it isn't that.” She paused and shook her head. "You told me that 1 must fail unless 1 came to you. Well. I’ve come—l’ve come to humiliate myself. I guess I’ve come to surrender." His face did not change and* he did not answer. Evidently, thought the girl bitterly, she bad not sufficiently abased herself. After a moment she went on in a very tired, yet a very eager voice. " "You are a man of action, Mr. Havey. 1 make my appeal to your manhood. I suppose you’ve never had a dream that has come to mean everything to you—but that’s the sort of dream I’ve had. That little girl. Dawn, wants a chance. Her little brother wants a chance. I’ve humbled myself to come and plead for them. If you take them away from me you will smash my school. I don’t underestimate your power now. Children are just beginning to come to me, and if you order these to leave, the others will leave, too, and they won’t come back. It will kill my school. If that’s your purpose, 1 guess it’s no use even to plead. I know you can do it —and yet you told me you weren’t making war on me.” \ “I reckon," interrupted Brother Talbott slowly, “ye needn’t have no fear of thet, ma’am. Anse wouldn’t do thet.” “But if you aren’t doing that," went on Juanita, “I want to make my plea just for the sake of these children of your own people. I’m ready to accept your terms. I’m ready to abase and humble my own pride, only, for God’s sake, give them a chance to grow clean and straight and break the shackles of illiteracy." She waited for the man to reply, but he neither spoke nor changed expression, so with an effort she went on. unconsciously bending a little forwardin her eagerness: “If you could see the way Dawn'has unfolded like a flower, the thirsty intelligence with which she has drunk up what I have taught her; the way it has opened new worlds to her ; I don’t think you could be willing to plunge her back into drudgery and ig norance. She is a woman, or soon will be, Mr. Havey. You don’t need women in your feuds/* Again came the cautioning voice of the preacher in his effort to keep her away from antagonizing lines. “They haln’t been called away fer nd reason like thet, ma’am.” But Juanita continued, ignoring the warning: “The other boy is too young for you to use yet Let him at least choose for himself. Let him reach the age when he shall have enough knowledge of both sides to make his own choice fairly. I’m hot asking odds. You have Jeb. and he wears your trademark in his face. The bitterness that lurks there shows that he Is wholly your vassal; yours and the feud’s. Doesn’t that satisfy you ? Won’t you let the others stay with me?” She broke off with a gasp. Anse Havey’s face stiffened. Even now he did not speak to her, but turned toward the missionary. “Brother Talbott," he said slowly, "would ye mind waitin’ out there on

the poren a little spell? I’d llk« to. talk with thisJady by herself." When ne had gone there wk* a short silence, which- Havey finally broke with a question: "Why didn’t ye say all these things to Jeb?’ I sent the letter on his sayso." ■ . *" “But you sent it —and all the Havey power is in your hands. Jeb wouldn’t understand such a plea. Lcome to the fountainhead My school Is not a Havey school nor a Mcßriar school. It is meant to open its doors to both sides of the ridge, regardless of factions." “Did young Milt come there ter git eddicatlon? I thought he went to col lege down below.” The question car t ied an undernote of irony. Juanita shook her bead. , "No.’’ she answered. “He came there as any other passer-by might have come, and be hasn't come often Let me keep the children and he shan't come again.” For a time Bad Anse stood there regarding her with a steady and pierc-

ing gaze, while his brows drew together in a frown rather of deep thoughtfulness than of displeasure “1 asked Brother Talbott to go out,” he finally said, “because I didn’t hardly want to hurt your feelin’s by telling you before him that your school can’t last You’re goin' about it all the wrong way, an’ it’s worse to go about a good thing the wrong way than to go about a bad thing the right way. 1 told ye once that ye couldn’t change the hills,, an* that ye'd change first yourself. I say that again. Ye can’t take fire out of blood with books. But If ye’ve done persuaded Brother Anse that you’re doin’ good, I didn’t want him to hear me belittle ye.” Anse Havey went to the window, where he drank deeply of the spiced air. Then he began to speak again, and this time it was in a voice the girl had never heard—a voice that held the fire of the natural orator and that was colorful with emotion. “The first time ye saw me ye made up your mind what character of man I was. Ye made it up from hearsay evidence, and ye ain’t never give me a chance to show ye whether ye was right or wrong. Ye say I’ve never dreamed a dream. Good God! ma’am, j’ye never had no true companionship except my dreams. When I was a little barefoot shaver I used ter sit there by that chimley an* dream dreams, an* one of ’ern’s the biggest thing in my life today. There were men around Frankfort, when I was in the. legislature, that 'lowed I might go to congress if I wanted to. I didn’t try. My dream was more to me than congress—an’ my dream was my own people: to stay here and help ’em.” He stepped over to the table and, with a swift and passionate gesture, caught up two books. “These are my best friends,” he said, and she read on the covers, “Plutarch’s Lives” and "Tragedies of William Shakespeare." The girl looked up in amazement, and she met in his gaze a fire and eagerness which silenced ker. She felt a wild thrill of admiration, not such as any other man had ever caused, but-such as she had felt when she watched the elemental play of lightning and thunder and wind along the mountain tops. CHAPTER XIV. “It’s only lonesome people," Anse Havey went on, “that knows how to love an* dream. I’ve stood up there on the ridge with Julius Caesar and Alexander the Great, an’ it seemed to me that 1 could see ’em as plain as I see you now. I could see the sun shinin’ on the eagles of the legion an' the Shields of the phalanx. I’m rich enough, 1 reckon, to live amongst other men that read books, but a dream keeps me here. The dream is that some day these here mountains shall come into their own. These people have got it in ’em ter be a great people, an’ I’ve stayed here because I aimed to try an’ help ’em." "But," she faintly expostulated, “you seem to stand for the very tilings that hold them back. You speak almost reverently of their killing instinct and The man shook his head gravely ana continued: ; "I’m a feudist because my peoplp are feudists am’ because l ean lead ’em only so long as Fm a fightin* Havey. God knows, if I could wipe out this

blood-sp.um* I’d gladly go out an* offes myself as a sacrifice to bring It about. You call me an outlaw—well, I’ve done made laws an' I’ve done broke them, an l*ve seen just about as much crookedness an' lawlessness at one end of the game as at the other.” "But schools?" demanded Juanita. “Why wouldn't they help your dream toward fulfillment?" - 4-ato-l against no school that eoabegin at the right end. I’m against every school that can only onsettie an' teach dissatisfaction with bumble livin’ where folks has got to live bumble." He paused and paced the room. He was no longer the man who bad seemed the immovable stoic. His eyei were far away, looking beyond tbs horizon into the future. “It’s took your people two centuries to get where they’re standin' today," be broke out abruptly, “an’ fer them two hundred years we’ve been standin’ still or goin’ back. Now ye come down here an* seeks to jerk my people up to where ye stands in the blinkin' of an eye. Ye comes lookin’ down on ’em an’ pityin' ’em because they won’t eat outen your hand. They’d rather be eagles than song-birds In a cage, even if eagles are wild an’ lawless. Ye comes here an’ straightway tells ’em that their leaders are infamous. Do ye offer ’em better leaders? Ys refuses the aid of men that know ’em—men of their blood —an’ go your own ignorant way. Do ye see any reason why I should countenance ye? Don’t ye see ye’re just a-scatterin’ my sheep before they knows how to herd themselves?" “I’m afraid," said the girl very slowly and humbly, “that I’ve been a fool." "Ye says the boy Jeb wears my trademark in the hate that’s on his face,” continued Anse Havey passionately. "He’s been here with me consortin’ with them fellers in Plutarch and Shakespeare. If I can curb him an’ keep him out of mischief he’s goin* down to Frankfort some day an’ leans his lessons in the legislature. He ain't goin* to no college, because I aims to fit him for his work right here. I seek to have fellers like him guide these folks forward. I don’t aim to have them civilized by bein’ wiped out an’ trod to death." He paused, and Juanita Holland repeated helplessly, “I’ve been a fool!" "I reckon ye don't know that young Jeb McNash thinks little Milt kilt Fletch, an* that one day he laid out in the la’rel to kill little Milt,” Bad Ansa pursued. "Ye don’t know that the only reason he stayed his hand was that I’d got his promise ter bide his time. But I reckon ye do know that if Milt was killed by a Havey all transpired in ten years wouldn’t make a patch on the hell-raisin’ that’d go on hereabouts in a week. Do ye think it’s strange thet Jeb don’t want his sister consortin’ with the boy that he thinks murdered his father?" Juanita rose from her chair, feeling like a pert and cocksure interloper who had been disdainfully looking down on one with a vision immeasurably wider and surer than her own. At last she found herself asking: “But surely Young Milt didn’t kill Fletch. Surely you don't believe that?" "No, 1 know he didn’t; but there’s just one way I can persuade young Jeb to believe it—an’ that’s to tell him who did." His eyes met hers and for a moment lighted with irony. "If I did that. I reckon Jeb would be willin’ to let ye keep Dawn an' Jesse —an', of course, he’d kill the other man. Do ye want me to do it?" He moved to the closed door and paused with his hand on the knob. “No, stop!" she almost screamed. "It would mean murder. Merciful God, it’s so hard to decide some things!” Anse Havey turned back to the room. “I just thought I’d let ye see that for yourself," he said quietly. "Ye ain’t hardly been able ter see why it’s hard for us people to decide 'em.” Suddenly a new thought struck her, and it brought from her a sudden question. "But you know who the murderer is, and you have spared him?" The man laughed. /’Don’t fret yourself, ma’am. The man that killed Fletch has left the mountains, an’ right now he’s out of reach. But he’ll be back some day, an’ when he comes I reckon the first news ye’ll hear of him will be that he’s dead.” Once more it was the implacable avenger that spoke. The girl could only murmur in perplexity: "Yet you have kept Jeb in ignorance. I don’t understand.” "I’ve got pther plans fer Jeb,** said: Bad Anse Havey. “1 dont low to let him be a feud killer. There’s others that can attend to that." He flung the dodr open and called Jeb, and a moment later the boy, black of countenance, came tn and stood glaring about with the sullen defiance of a young bull just turned into the ring to face the matador. "Jeb," suggested the chief gravely, "1 reckon If Dawn don’t see Young Milt again ye ain’t goin’ to object to her havin’ an education, are ye?” The boy stiffened, and his reply was surly. “I don’t low ter hev my folks a eoa sortin’ with no Mcßriars." Anse Havey spoke again, very qu* etly: “Milt didn’t know no more aboiA that killin’ than I did, Jeb.” “How does ye know thet?" The question burst out fiercely and swiftly. The boy bent forward, his eyes eagerly and his mouth stiff in a snail of sug» pense. "How does ye know?" “Because I know who did." “Tell mo his name!" The shrill de mand was almost * shriek. (TO BB CONTINUiaXJ - -IT ’ • • ■

“Will You Go With Me?” She Asked Little Weakly.

For a Time Bad Anse Stood There Regarding Her With a Steady and Piercing Gaze.