It was the chivalric custom of the Virginians to protect their woman-kind in all circumstances, at all costs and at all hazards, not only against wrong and danger, but equally against annoyance and especially the annoyance of publicity. Women in Virginia were proudly feminine; men intensely and bravely masculine.

Accordingly the news of Boyd Westover's case had only begun to spread abroad when all the male relatives of all the girls in Le Voiser's school set themselves to hurry their daughters, sisters and nieces into secure hiding, so that they might be spared the annoyance of appearing in court as witnesses in a criminal case.

Short as the time was, the officers sent to serve summonses upon such as were wanted found the school well nigh deserted. Some even of those on whom they succeeded in serving their subpœnas were protectingly abducted before the day of the trial by relatives who braved the penalties of contempt of court in rescue of delicately nurtured maidens dear to them.

Nevertheless there were one or two of the girls present in court when Boyd Westover was called to the bar. These had been in hiding, but their places of concealment had been discovered and the girls themselves brought by force to the court. Then too the matron was there prepared to bear unhesitating witness to Boyd's identity with the offender.

A good deal of time was consumed in securing a jury. The first man called declared:

"I would not believe this charge against Boyd Westover even if I had been present, seeing him with my own eyes." Others expressed their incredulity in different forms of words but with equal positiveness, and of course all such were rejected. It thus happened that the jury was not completed till a late hour in the day. But on the other hand it took very little time for the Commonwealth's witnesses to give their testimony, and after one or two fruitless attempts to secure from them an admission of doubt or possible mistake, Jack Towns forbore to cross examine them.

He had no witnesses to offer in his client's behalf. He had nothing to depend upon indeed except a certain persuasive eloquence which had often served him well, and this he brought to bear with all his passionate nature to stimulate it. He spoke for an hour. He argued, pleaded, persuaded. He set forth the character of his client and of the distinguished family from which he was sprung. He dwelt upon the utter improbability of the commission of such a crime by such a man. He pointed out and emphasized the fact that a girls' school was not the place that any housebreaker in his senses would think of entering in search of booty. He ended with an impassioned setting forth of the ruin and disgrace that must fall upon this high-charactered young man as the result of an adverse verdict. So eloquently and so pathetically did he present the pitiful aspect of the matter that tears ran down scores of cheeks, and the Judge himself bowed his head upon the desk in front of the bench, as if to conceal an emotion he could not control.

The Commonwealth's Attorney—the prosecuting officer—rose, but instead of making the usual speech, simply said, in a voice choked with sobs:

"The testimony is before you, gentlemen of the jury. I have nothing to add to it."

There was but one result possible. Ten minutes after the jury retired, it filed into court again bearing a verdict of "Guilty."

Boyd Westover was a convicted felon. The sun of his fair young life had gone down amid clouds of black disgrace, and it could know no rising. Worse than death a thousand fold, worse than the cruelest torture was this to a proudly sensitive nature, nurtured in traditions of honor that held every slightest character stain to be an indelible blot.

Yet it was with head erect, with dry eyes, with unshaken nerves and unflinching spirit that he met this decree of doom. It was the tradition of his race to meet Fate without faltering, to fight while the possibility of fighting lasted, and when it failed, to shroud an undaunted soul in the chain mail of unconquerable courage.

When the verdict was rendered, the young man turned to his friend and counsellor, and in an entirely unemotional voice, said:

"I thank you sincerely for all you have done and tried to do. I have need of a little time in which to arrange my affairs. Can you do me a final favor by securing it for me?"

The matter was easily arranged. The Judge, full of compassion for the ruined youth, and in spite of reason, testimony, and everything else, still not believing in Boyd Westover's guilt, asked if ten days would suffice. Then without renewing the bail bonds that had expired with the beginning of the trial, he appointed the tenth day thereafter for sentence. It was the Commonwealth's Attorney's business to move for the renewal of the bonds, without which the condemned man was in fact under no restraint whatever, but he made no motion of the kind. When asked by Jack Towns some time afterwards why he had not done his duty in that respect, he replied:

"I simply couldn't. Boyd Westover and I were schoolmates, you know, and I lived for many months in his father's house. I knew he wouldn't run away. Who ever heard of a Westover flinching? Why should I subject him to an indignity?"

Thus, in Virginia, did character—personal and inherited—count. There were some things that a gentleman could not do. He might commit a crime of violence, but he could not do a cowardly or treacherous act. The bailiff who had trusted Boyd Westover's word of honor, knew that and risked the loss of his place upon his confidence in it. The Commonwealth's Attorney knew it and took the chance of impeachment upon it.

The net result was that on the day of his conviction Boyd Westover walked out of court an absolutely free man except in so far as he was bound by his own sense of honor and by the traditions of the race from which he was sprung. These bound him to appear in court for sentence at the end of the ten days allowed to him, and as everybody knew, the bond was amply sufficient.

Jack Towns took him in the meanwhile to his own house.

"You'll be my guest," he said, "and I'll see that we aren't interrupted."

"You still don't mind that?" Boyd asked.

For response he got an earnest look in the eyes, and the verbal answer:

"Don't be a fool, Boyd."

After a minute, Boyd asked, reflectively:

"How is it, Jack, that you and some others seem still to believe in me? In view of the evidence—"

"Hang the evidence," interrupted the lawyer. "Don't you know that character is the most important and the most trustworthy fact in life? You don't suppose for a moment that I have a doubt in your case, do you? If you do, you grievously wrong my friendship."

"How then do you account for the facts as set forth in the testimony against me?"

"What do you mean, Boyd? Are you trying to convince me that you are guilty of a crime that I know to be utterly impossible to you?"

"No. I am only trying to find out the grounds of your confidence in me, so that I may know how far to impose on them in making my arrangements for the future. That's the purport of my question, which, by the way, you haven't answered yet."

"Oh well, as to that, you're the victim of some hideous mistake. If you had let me stave off your trial for six months the chances are we should have found out what the mistake is. As it is—"

"As it is, I couldn't have lived for six months in such suspense as that. Neither could you, in like case. We're the sort of men who say to the lightning, 'Strike if you will, but don't prolong your threats.' Besides, I cannot see how this thing could have been bettered by delay. Those girls honestly believe they recognized me as an intruder in the school. They would believe that quite as firmly six months hence as now."

"Perhaps so. But six months hence not one of them would have been in Virginia to testify against you. Their friends would have taken care of that."

"Yes, I know. And I should have been suspected of securing my acquittal by spiriting away the witnesses against me. I couldn't live under so black a shadow as that."

"I understand. But all this is profitless. We have much to do to get your affairs in order. Let us address ourselves to that. First of all I've had all your mail sent up here from the hotel. Suppose you read it now, and after supper we'll set to work."

When the shadows begin to fall upon a human life, they fall quickly and darkly.

In Boyd Westover's mail was a letter from the agent who had arranged the mortgage loan upon Wanalah plantation, threatening to abandon the arrangement on the ground that young Westover's conviction impaired the security. This sorely troubled Boyd Westover—for if he was to go to prison his mother's financial ease was a matter of primary concern to him. It didn't trouble Jack Towns in the least.

"Leave that to me for answer," the lawyer said, taking possession of the letter. "The man ought to seek employment as an oyster-opener at Rockett's. That's about his size. That mortgage is completely executed. I've seen to it, pending—other things. That will stand, and, as the property is amply good for it, the fellow's an idiot to want to fly his bargain."

There was news in the next mail that could not be so lightly dismissed. The family physician wrote that Boyd's mother, already in feeble and precarious health, had been shocked by the tidings of her son's calamity into a condition that threatened the worst. This calamity was one which even Boyd Westover's stoicism could not face without flinching. From childhood his affection for his mother had been a dominant passion, and since his father's death it had become fatherly as well as filial. He had jealously guarded that "little mother," as he called her, against every shock, every care, every breath of an adverse wind as it were. He had made a veritable pet of her, and while never for a moment laying aside his chivalric respect and reverence, he had added to them a certain big brotherly manner in which she had found joy untellable. If she wearied while walking with him in the house grounds, he would pick her up, as he might have done with any child, and in spite of her laughing protests, carry her into the porch and deposit her in a hammock. If a light shone disagreeably in her eyes he discovered it and shut it off before she became conscious of its glare. If she went to her room to rest he quietly stationed a maid at the foot of the stairs with orders to permit no noise and no passing up or down.

Now that news came of this dearly loved little mother's serious illness, the young man was made to suffer agonies by the consciousness that her affliction was on his account, so that it required all of Jack Towns's eloquence to convince him that he was himself in nowise to blame for it. By way of emphasizing that, the young lawyer had to put the matter into brutally plain phrase.

"If you were guilty of the crime of which you have been convicted, and for which you will have to serve a term in state's prison, you would do well to scourge your soul with a whip of scorpions for your sin against the mother who bore you. As you are innocent of that and of all other crimes you have no right to hold yourself responsible for the consequences of other people's mistakes."

"Am I free to go to my mother while she yet lives?" Boyd asked in an agony of apprehension.

Then Jack Towns lied—like the generous gentleman he was.

"No," he said. "Legally you are free to go anywhere you please—to Mozambique or the dominions of Mumbo Jumbo if you choose. But you are free only because of the generous confidence of the Judge and the Commonwealth's Attorney in your honor as a gentleman. You are bound by that honor not to leave Richmond during the days granted you."

As a matter of fact Jack Towns had in his possession a letter addressed to him by the Westover family physician in which were written these words:

"Whatever else happens, for heaven's sake don't let Boyd come home now. The shock of seeing him would kill his mother out of hand."

But Jack Towns was a lawyer and he found a better way of putting the matter by way of accomplishing his purpose.

Still another thing darkened the young man's way. It was not because of news, but because of no news at all.

There was no line in any of his mails from Margaret Conway, the woman he loved with all his soul, the woman who had plighted her troth to him in the impassioned words he so well remembered:

"I am not a woman to love lightly or lightly to forget. Love seems to me a holy thing, and to trifle with it a blasphemy. I have given you my love, Boyd, and there is no power in all the universe that can make me take it back. Even you could not do that. Nothing you might do—even if it were crime itself—could alter the fact that my love is all yours, now and forever."

Upon reflection, he absolved Margaret from blame, and with good reason. Upon his first accusation he had not written to her at all in supplement to the love letter of that night. He had regarded the whole matter as a thing preposterous, which a hearing in the magistrate's court would promptly dissipate into thin air, and it had been his kindly thought not to tell her of the absurd accusation until he could tell her also of the ridiculous end made of it at a court hearing. When at last the matter had assumed a serious aspect he had written her a letter in which he had asserted his innocence but without protesting it in any impassioned way. To that he had added:

"Of course if I am a man of honor I am bound to offer you a release from the engagement between us, while if I am not an honorable man but the criminal I am accused of being, you are free to take your release without permission from me."

A calculation showed that if that letter had reached its destination when it should, and if an answer had been sent by the first returning mail, he should now have the reply. But mails were slow and uncertain in those days and The Oaks lay far up near the Blue Ridge and seven miles from the post office. It might easily have happened that his letter to Margaret had not reached her as soon as it should; or that the shock of it might have unfitted her to reply immediately; or that her answer might have been delayed in transmission. All these were possibilities, and they comforted the young man.

But as the days went by and still no letter came from Margaret the comfort became less and less, until at last he despaired and summoned his stoicism to his relief.

"Why should I have expected her to write to me?" he asked himself. "What obligation can she owe to a convicted criminal? I was a fool to look for a letter. I must bear my burden alone. I must meet my fate with a calm mind."

Then another thought came to him.

"I am living in a fool's paradise. Jack Towns professes still to believe in me, and perhaps he does. But how can I expect anybody else to do so? In view of the testimony against me, there is no room or reason for doubt of my guilt in any sane mind. I must recognize that and face it with what courage I can. I am a convicted criminal, and I must expect everybody to regard me as such. I must go through my life with that brand upon my brow. There is an end of hope for me. I must simply endure."

It was characteristic of him that in all this melancholy meditation, no thought of suicide entered his mind. He had from his youth up held his life in readiness for sacrifice in any worthy behalf. There was never a time when he would not have given it as a forfeit in behalf of those he loved, never a time when he would not have laid it down gladly in answer to any call of duty. But the cowardly thought of destroying it by way of himself escaping from intolerable sufferings did not suggest itself to his brave young soul. It is a man's part to endure what comes to a man, and Boyd Westover was altogether a man.

He remembered Margaret's impassioned promise, and he doubted not the sincerity of her soul in giving it. But he absolved her now and accepted the result as part and parcel of the strangely bewildering Fate that had overtaken him.

To that effect he wrote to her on the night before the day appointed for his sentencing. On that day had come to him the crushing news of his mother's death, and very bitterly he had felt the cruelty of a fate that forbade him even to go home to bury his dead.

He wrote to Margaret:

"I find that I have been expecting some letter from you in reply to my late one. I realize that I had neither right nor reason to expect anything of the kind. I am a convicted criminal, convicted upon testimony so conclusive that no sane person can doubt its truth. To-morrow morning I shall be sentenced. You can have no relations with me. You can bear me no duty of any kind. It is only to say this that I write to you now, to say that I hold you absolved from any and all obligations toward me, and that I shall live and die cherishing in full measure my faith in your loyalty and truth. You are never to let a doubt of that vex your mind."

With that he finally banished all thought of his past life, its joys, its sorrows, its aspirations and its apprehensions, from his mind.

"How long a sentence will they give me, Jack?" he asked his lawyer.

"I don't know. The shortest, probably, or very nearly the shortest that the law allows; not over two years at any rate."

"Of course it doesn't matter," Boyd answered. "Two minutes or two years of shame are all one to a sensitive man, and as for the 'hard labor,' I'm strong and well. I probably shall not find it interesting to grind stove lids or do whatever else the prison authorities set me at, but at any rate the work will occupy the time and prevent me from thinking too deeply. It will tire me, too, so that I shall sleep of nights."

Jack Towns found nothing to say by way of reply, and he said nothing. Presently Boyd drew a package of papers from his pocket and passed it over to the man he regarded as the one friend left him in all the world now.

"Perhaps you'd better look into that," he said. "It may help Wanalah out of difficulty. I don't know. The thing came in my mail a week ago, but it didn't interest me then and I slipped it into my pocket and forgot all about it. No, don't bother with it now. Read it later. Just now I have something else to talk to you about. You've promised to look after my affairs while I'm in prison, and there's one thing I want to ask you. Don't let the overseer at Wanalah work the servants too hard. There is no need. With only ordinary crops the plantation can easily carry its load now, and I don't want the people there overworked. See to it please. Now if you don't mind, I'm going to bed. To-morrow night I'll lie in a cell."

With that the young man withdrew, and after half an hour of sad gazing at the moonlight that streamed in through the window, Jack Towns turned up the gas and set to work reading the papers that had failed to interest their owner. They interested Jack Towns amazingly, and he had no sooner finished the reading of them than he hurried unceremoniously into Boyd's room, and shaking him said:

"Here, get up. This thing must be attended to immediately. There are papers to be drawn and executed at once. So hustle into some clothes quick."

When rumors came to The Oaks of Boyd Westover's trouble, Margaret Conway's first impulse was to drive over to Wanalah and comfort Boyd's mother with assurances that there could be no truth in the reports. Margaret had always cherished a very tender affection for Mrs. Westover, and during the brief time since her love had been pledged to Boyd, she had found that affection rapidly taking upon itself the character of a girl's tenderness for her mother. Having never known a mother of her own, the girl was quick to make herself a daughter in affection where she was presently to become a daughter in law and in fact. She drove every day to Wanalah and spent loving hours there with the gentle invalid who had so warmly welcomed her daughterly love.

But when the evil news of Boyd's conviction came and Margaret planned to go earlier than usual to Wanalah, Colonel Conway objected.

"You will only distress yourself and afflict her," he said. "This thing will be your only topic of conversation, and what can either of you say that will bring comfort to the other?"

"I can tell her I love her and that I loyally believe in Boyd," answered the girl with all the pride of her race in her voice and attitude.

"But how can you say that, daughter, in face of the evidence?"

"It isn't evidence—it's merely testimony. The evidence lies in Boyd Westover's character and it flatly contradicts the testimony. The testimony is false; the evidence is subject to no possible question. I'm sorry you don't see it so, Father."

The old man paced the floor for a space and then answered:

"Perhaps I do see it so. I'd like to, at any rate; I'm strongly disposed to give the young man the benefit of the doubt, but—"

"There isn't any doubt," interjected the passionate girl with vehemence. "There isn't any doubt, and I shall quarrel even with you, Father, if you suggest such a thing."

"Be calm, my child," pleaded the old man placatively. "Perhaps you are right. I'm disposed to take your view—strongly so. But there's your Aunt Betsy, you know."

"Yes, I know. She's the only human being you were ever afraid of, Father. But you're afraid of her as everybody else is—everybody but me. I don't know why."

"But your Aunt Betsy presents the matter in a way that must be considered. She says—"

"Oh, I know what she says," interrupted the overwrought girl. "She has said it all to me, over and over again. She urges the conventions—the cowardly shams and falsities of our artificial life. She talks of 'what people will say,' as if it made any difference what people say when we know we are doing right. You know that Boyd Westover is an honorable man, just as I know it. If you hadn't been afraid of Aunt Betsy, you'd have done your duty like a man; you'd have gone to Boyd's side. You'd have stood by him in his hour of need—"

"But, Margaret, what good would that have done in face of the evidence or the testimony, for I agree with you that there's a difference?"

"It would have strengthened and encouraged him with the assurance that one brave man at least knew his character and was ready to face calumny with an assertion of his confidence. But you were afraid of Aunt Betsy. It is the only cowardice I ever knew you to be guilty of. She talks of placing 'blots on our escutcheon'—as if we had an escutcheon, whatever that sort of thing may be; I tell you the worst blot of all was made by your failure to go to Richmond and stand by Boyd in his undeserved trouble. You played the part of a coward there. Pardon me if my words are harsh. I feel them and mean them. Now I am going to Wanalah. I, at least, will do my part as a descendant of a brave race, if all the demons of perdition stand in the way."

With that the girl moved proudly out of the house, mounted the horse that a negro held waiting for her, and rode away.

She did not return until after the funeral at Wanalah, which her father and her aunt attended, and when she returned, her attitude was one of stately reserve which appalled her father and "grieved" her aunt.

In the meanwhile she had written every day a loyal letter to Boyd Westover.

Not one of those letters ever reached him. Nor did any of his letters come to her. Aunt Betsy had deemed it her "duty to the family" to see to that, and Aunt Betsy prided herself upon doing her duty, no matter how disagreeable it might be—to others.

But the failure of the missives left Margaret in sorely distressing perplexity. Why did not Boyd write to her? Why did he not take her into his confidence? Especially why did he not respond, in some way, to her repeated avowals of splendid loyalty and confidence?

She could not understand. She could not even inquire. She could only mourn.

Jack Towns was accustomed to have about him whatever there was that could make his hard-working life comfortable, if any reasonable expenditure of money could secure it. And he interpreted the words "reasonable expenditure," in that connection, rather liberally. His income was large and he had nobody anywhere dependent upon him. Accordingly he was one of the two or three self-indulgent men in Richmond at that time, who possessed a set bath tub with water taps running into it and a showering apparatus above.

When he roused his friend that night, after hurriedly running through the packet of papers, he was full of an eagerness and enthusiasm which the other did not seem to share. Boyd Westover was sleepy, and worse still, in his present case, he was indifferent. What good could a packet of papers or anything else bring to a man disgraced, condemned, doomed to a life of lost repute? He heartily wished that Jack had kept the papers and done whatever he pleased with them after the closing of the prison doors behind himself on the approaching day. But in response to Jack's insistence, he arose, drew on a light dressing gown and slippers, and offered his dully uninterested presence in Jack's dining room. 4 Promptly recognizing his condition of mind, Jack took matters into his own hands, after a masterful habit he had. He seized Boyd by the elbow and led him into the bath room.

"There," he said; "lay off your gown and pull your toes out of those slippers. Hop into the tub and I'll wake you up."

At the next instant the cold shower descended upon the young man's head and person, and Jack continued his chatter.

"Now you're awake, rub yourself down and come into the dining room. I've got to have you awake and you and I are going to work all night. I've sent Dick for half a hundred oysters and a dozen bottles of cold ale, and later he'll make black coffee for us. Hurry up now, and 'do try to be interested' as a bashful friend of mine said to a girl when he was about to propose to her."

As he left the bath room abruptly, Boyd made no reply until he joined the lawyer in the dining room where the papers from the packet lay spread out in the order in which they were to be taken up for consideration. Then he said:

"I will try to be interested, Jack; for your sake I'll do my best. But what interest can a man in my position feel in anything?"

"Now listen to me, Boyd!" Jack Towns said commandingly, and rising to his feet to say it. "Listen to me. You are morbid. You need calomel or something. You're the victim of some mistake and you're in sore trouble. But you are not disgraced. Nobody can disgrace a man but the man himself. You are conscious of your own honor; what matters it what others think? Besides, no honest man in Virginia believes that you are guilty of a sneaking crime or capable of it. The jury that convicted you didn't believe it and not one of them believes it now. The Judge who will sentence you doesn't believe it. If the envious and malignant falsely pretend to believe it, why should you care for the despicable pretense of people so utterly unworthy? If cowards fight shy of your acquaintance, lest recognition of you should compromise themselves, why should you care for the acquaintance of such poltroons? You are Westover of Wanalah—inheritor of an honorable name. You will be that so long as you shall live. It behoves you to bear that name with head erect and with contempt alone for those who do not recognize your worthiness to bear it. This affair is an unfortunate incident. It will soon be over, and you will have a lifetime before you in which to teach men the falsity of the accusation against you. There. My lecture is done. Let us get to these papers. They hold great news for you."

When the two were seated, Jack took up a letter, which was first of the papers in the order of consideration.

"This is from a firm of lawyers, Dodge, Denslow and Deming of Denver—charmingly alliterative throughout—do you happen to know who they are?"

"Yes, in a way. There was a memorandum among my father's papers, that mentioned them."

"Well, go on. What did it say, or reveal, or suggest? This is business, Boyd. Put your thinking machine on it."

"I will,—to oblige you, Jack. The memorandum catalogued a long list of mining lands and mining claims somewhere up in the Rocky Mountains or in some side issue of a range—you'll find the paper in my desk at home—lands and claims which my father had bought during one of his journeys out that way and had placed in my name, as a provision for me in case of accident."

"That accounts for these papers being in your name and not your father's," interrupted Jack. "I was puzzled by that. But go on. I want to hear all about it."

"Well, you know my father was an optimist—a dreamer almost—and he was possessed of an idea, reflected in the memorandum, that these things would make the future Westover of Wanalah—myself or my son if I should have one—enormously rich. As nearly as I could make out, the multitudinous lands and mining claims he bought in my name covered a large area of entirely untillable and not very accessible land somewhere up in the high mountains, where grub-staked miners scratched the surface for silver ore, with now and then a little find of gold. They worked on shares somehow, and this law firm collected my share from time to time and remitted it. It was so small a part of the assets of the estate that I've forgotten how much it was. That's all I know of Dodge, Denslow & Deming."

"You're likely to know a good deal more about them hereafter," said Jack, "if I can awaken in your mind a reasonable interest in a matter that promises to make you the richest man in Virginia, twice or thrice over."

"Cui bono?" responded Boyd. "When my prison term ends I shall have enough, without that, to feed me, and I've nobody else to feed."

"Boyd Westover, if you go on in that mood, I'll chuck you into the bath tub again and set the shower going without giving you a chance to shed your clothes. Can't you see that when you—when—well, when present difficulties are over, this thing will give you an interest in life, something to occupy your mind, something to manage and—oh, I forgot, you don't know the facts yet. It appears from these papers—we won't bother now to read them in detail—that the mining lands your father bought in your name, have proved to be about the richest in the world. They cover practically all of one of the richest deposits of gold, silver, lead, and quicksilver, ever discovered. Listen. This is the way Jake Greenfield puts it in a letter. Jake seems to be a shrewd Yankee whom your lawyers have established on the lands to watch operations and prevent trespass. He writes to the lawyers:

"'I don't s'pose Mr. Westover nor you neither's got a krect idee of what he's got up here. It's like an injun's blanket, with fringes all round it. He's got the blanket an' these fellers what's opened up mines north an' south of him has got the fringes. Nachurly they's a tryin' to git in under the blanket, but I'm a watchin' out an' they're a doin' no trespassin'. They's got the fence corners an' Mr. Weststover's got the field. They's plannin' to buy him out an' they's got experts an' engineers an' lawyers enuff here to run a ship or an orphan asylum. My say to Mr. West Stover is don't bargain with 'em till you know for yourself. That used to be our way in Varmont, whare I come from. This is my wink to a blind hoss, an' a nod with it.'

"The lawyers seem to have taken Jake Greenfield's counsel seriously, so far at least as to send experts of their own to study the situation, and these seem to confirm Jake's judgment. So do these other letters, from the mining men who want to buy you out. I'll read them."

"Can't you summarize them in your own words, Jack?" interrupted Boyd. "The thing doesn't greatly interest me, and—"

"Well, listen then, and perhaps I can awaken your interest. These people it appears are amply backed by New York and Boston bankers. In fact the bankers really constitute the company, and they seem to know their own minds. They have spent some hundreds of thousands in setting up machinery and all that sort of thing, and they say their mining operations are paying heavy dividends—twenty-five or thirty per cent. on their investment. But the richest leads or lodes or veins or whatever they are called, lie beneath your land. You've got the blanket and they only the fringe, as Jake picturesquely puts it. They want to buy the blanket, or get in under it somehow, and they're prepared to pay for what they want. They propose to organize a new company to work the whole thing; they to put in their plant, their costly machinery, their mining privileges and all their other assets, and you to put in your mineral lands. They make you a flat offer of nine hundred thousand dollars in money, and thirty-nine per cent. of the stock of the new company, if you will join them in this project by ceding your lands, mining rights, etc., to the joint concern. Perhaps they can be induced to do better even than that, as they seem very eager, but that is what they offer to begin with. It means fabulous wealth to you if their hopes as to the profits of the new company are measurably fulfilled, and even if they are not fulfilled at all it means that you can wear Wanalah plantation as a watch charm for all your life to come. Isn't that a fine prospect?"

Jack was disappointed in Boyd's reply. He had hoped that this startling happening might awaken his friend to a new interest in life and life's affairs, but, after swallowing two oysters and slowly sipping half a glass of ale, the unfortunate young man said, in a melancholy tone:

"I suppose the thing ought to be looked into. If I were a free man again, I'd make my way out into those wilds and see what could be done. As it is—"

"As it is," broke in Jack Towns, "you're going to execute a sweeping power of attorney authorizing me to act for you, and I'm going out there. When you—well, I mean later,—you'll take hold of the thing yourself, and those hustling fellows out there will wake you up, if I can't. Go to bed now, if you feel like it. I'll prepare the power of attorney and you can execute it at breakfast time. I must say you're uncommonly bad company."

"I suppose I am," said Boyd as he shuffled off to his bedroom.

It was with a firm step and with head erect, and, more significant still, with eyes that looked straight into other eyes without a suggestion of flinching, that Boyd Westover entered the court room on the morning appointed for the pronouncement of sentence upon him. Jack Towns, who accompanied him, thought he had never seen so superb an exhibition of stoicism as that which Boyd had given throughout this affair.

"But this caps the climax," he said to the Commonwealth's Attorney, whose drawn features showed clearly the distress he felt in view of the duty he had to do in moving that sentence be pronounced upon his old schoolmate, his boyhood's comrade, whom he had been compelled to prosecute and convict of an infamous crime.

"Just look at him," Jack whispered. "For all that his appearance or his manner could mean you'd think he had come here to deliver an oration on some distinguished occasion. It's simply magnificent!"

"It is simply horrible—my part of it, I mean," answered the other with a suppressed groan.

There was no further time for conversation. The moment had come when Boyd Westover must be called to the bar to receive the sentence of the court. The Commonwealth's Attorney made the necessary motion in a voice that could hardly be heard because of his lack of control over his organs of speech. The Judge tried hard to deliver the little address he had carefully prepared as a means of suggesting what he could not say—that in spite of everything he could not personally regard Boyd Westover as a man actually guilty of crime. His voice behaved so badly that after a futile attempt he gave up the effort to say anything, except the formal words that condemned the prisoner to serve a term at hard labor in the State prison.

The term fixed by the sentence was the shortest that the law allowed, but what comfort was there in that to a sensitive man like Boyd Westover, to whom disgrace for half a minute meant the same thing as disgrace for all time? It is doubtful that he even grasped the meaning of the words used in limiting the sentence to the briefest time allowed.

As there were papers to be made out and signed, Jack Towns and his client sat for a brief while waiting. Presently there was a little commotion in the outer corridor and a moment later a bailiff hurriedly entered and made his way to the Commonwealth's Attorney, to whom he whispered excitedly. That officer asked a brief question or two under his breath. Then he turned to the court and said, while all listened with the greatest interest:

"If your honor please, something has happened—something out of the ordinary, something important, something which if I am correctly informed vitally concerns business now before the court. I ask to be excused for a few minutes in order that I may learn the facts and report them to the court."

With that, receiving a nod of approval from the Judge, he withdrew.

When he had gone the Judge said:

"We may as well save what we can of the time of waiting. Mr. Clerk, if you have the papers ready in the Westover case I'll sign them."

They were passed to him and, after he had signed them, handed over to the sheriff, thus completing that matter at once.

A moment later, the Commonwealth's Attorney returned, pale to the lips, trembling like one in an ague fit, and with the muscles about his mouth twitching in a way that was positively painful to all who looked at him.

In a voice that was hard, metallic, and obviously controlled only by a supreme effort of the will, he addressed the court.

"There has been a terrible mistake made," he said with none of the formalities of speech usual in addressing a tribunal,—"a disastrous, cruel, irreparable mistake, for my share in which I hide my head in shame as I ask God and man to pardon me. In convicting and sentencing Boyd Westover, we have convicted and sentenced an innocent man. The real culprit is now in a jury room adjoining this apartment. He has been caught in a repetition of the act for which Boyd Westover has been convicted and sentenced. He has confessed that he was the offender on the former occasion, and the committing magistrate before whom he was brought this morning has brought him hither to repeat his confession and to let your honor look upon him. It is the most phenomenal case of mistaken identity I ever knew or heard of. Even fiction, with its limitless license of invention, offers no parallel that I ever heard of. The resemblance between this man and Boyd Westover is so perfect, so startling in its completeness that I could never have believed it upon any testimony other than that of my own eyes. I ask permission to bring the prisoner into court."

By this time the court room was packed with all sorts and conditions of men, for the news of what had happened during the night before had spread like wildfire over the city.

A minute later the prisoner, who gave his name as "Dolly Andrews," but admitted that "Dolly" was short for Adolphus, was brought to the bar. At the Commonwealth's Attorney's request, Boyd Westover moved forward and stood by his side.

The two men were precisely alike in size, form and feature, but strangely unlike in expression. As Jack Towns put the matter: "Boyd Westover, being a gentleman, looks into your eyes when he speaks to you or you to him; the other fellow looks anywhere but at you. In the one face there is intelligence,—in the other a low cunning; in the one an alert outlook, in the other a look of morbid introspection. Still the two men are absolutely alike in all physical respects—more alike than I supposed that even twins could be. I could myself easily mistake one for the other, and I don't wonder that a lot of excited school girls, routed out of bed in the middle of the night and with only bedroom candles to see by, made the terrible mistake they did."

The problem now was what to do. Fortunately the committing magistrate was a man of wise discretion. He presented himself in court and said to the Judge:

"I have not yet committed this man, though he was caught in the act and has made full confession, both as to his present offence and as to the former crime, of which another has been mistakenly convicted. I have thought it better to bring him before your honor and ask you to sit as committing magistrate in the case, in order that you may yourself hear his confession. It has seemed to me that this course was best in aid of justice in another case."

After an exchange of dignified compliments, the Judge, sitting as a committing magistrate, heard the case. During the preceding night there had been an alarm of "burglars" in Le Voiser's school. As before, the matron marshalled her charges for retreat, but this time there were two stalwart men on the premises and awaiting call. Monsieur Le Voiser had looked out for that, by ordering his furnace man and his steward to sleep in a room within convenient call, and when the intruder attempted to escape they were there to seize and hold him by physical force.

They testified to the facts.

Then the culprit repeated the confession he had already made. He seemed in no way ashamed, and he did not hesitate. He declared that it was he, and not Boyd Westover, who had invaded the school on the former occasion, and when asked what his motive was, he disclaimed all purposes of robbery and sought to justify himself by the solemn declaration:

"On both occasions I went there under the command of the Supreme Being."

"Just what do you mean by that?" asked the Judge, testily.

"I am divinely commissioned to marry Miss—"

"Stop!" commanded the Judge. "Don't mention the young lady's name. Just say 'a certain young lady.' We won't have her name dragged into the case."

"Very well," said the culprit. "It is only that I am acting under a divine commission and have nothing to conceal. I must marry the young lady in question. I met her in the street once, and talked to her on the subject. She mistook me for Boyd Westover, and I thought it best to use that name in my dealings with her. You see, Judge, when one is divinely commissioned to achieve a purpose, details make no difference."

"Go on," said the Judge; "omit explanations and arguments, and tell what happened."

"The young lady rejected my addresses. I was not discouraged by that. I had been divinely warned to expect it. I wrote her many notes, but she did not reply to them. Then I saw my duty clearly. I decided to use gentle force and carry her away with me, leaving the divine influence to chasten her proud spirit and teach her the duty of loving me. I have been twice defeated in my endeavors. I shall succeed when the appointed time is ripe. I must be patient and faithful, that is all."

"After all," whispered Jack Towns to the Commonwealth's Attorney, "that hysterical girl who said he had come to abduct her was right, except in her identification of the man."

"Yes, but the exception is one of disastrous consequences. Help me, Towns, to right this wrong! I'll never do the like again. I'll never prosecute another case so long as I live. I've already sent in my resignation from office."

"You're a sublimated idiot," said Jack. "Listen. The Judge is speaking."

"I will commit this man to await the action of the Grand Jury," the Judge said. "In the meanwhile the Court suggests to the Commonwealth's Attorney the propriety of asking for a commission in lunacy to inquire into this man's sanity."

Thus spurred out of the lethargic collapse into which he had fallen, the official prosecutor made the necessary motion and the court promptly appointed the commission.

Then Jack Towns arose to ask:

"What is to be done to right the wrong in the case of my client? And more especially, what is to be done to prevent the aggravation of that wrong? I call attention to the fact that the papers committing this obviously innocent man to the penitentiary are already in the hands of the sheriff, who has no right to exercise discretion in the case. In the ordinary course of events my client, innocent of offence as he obviously is, must pass the portals of the prison within the hour. I ask the court to prevent this crowning wrong in a case in which enough and too much of wrong has been done already."

The Judge was in full sympathy, but for order's sake he asked if the Commonwealth's Attorney desired to be heard in opposition to the request of the counsel.

"Not in opposition," said the official, "but in full and hearty sympathy. I feel that a great wrong has been done; I feel this so strongly that I have sent to the proper authority my resignation of the office I hold, in order that I may never again have part or lot in a wrong so grievous. I earnestly second the request of the counsel for the prisoner that everything shall be done which the law permits, to prevent further wrong and to right the wrong already done."

"Very well," said the Judge. "The sheriff is ordered to return to the clerk the papers in his possession. The prisoner is paroled in the custody of his counsel, to await further proceedings. Unfortunately the court knows of no process of law by which the fact of this innocent man's conviction and sentence can be undone. It is not within the power of man to make that not to be which has been. The court cannot undo the proceedings that have been had in this case. It can only make an earnest effort to prevent the wrongful results of those proceedings. To that end I purpose to go in person before the Governor of the State to ask for the fullest reparation that can be made, namely, a pardon—pardon for a crime that has not been committed. It seems almost a mockery, but it is the best that is possible under the law. In order to give all the emphasis I can to the proceedings, I shall adjourn court for a time, and ask the Commonwealth's Attorney to accompany me on this mission of justice. Further than that, I direct him to summon the members of the jury that convicted Boyd Westover of a crime of which he is not guilty, to go with us before the Governor and join us in our request. So far as the securing of a pardon is concerned, no effort of this kind is necessary; but the court deems it proper in this case to make this united appeal of judge, jury, and prosecutor by way of emphasizing our recognition of the injustice done. The court stands adjourned until four o'clock this afternoon, at which hour Mr. Boyd Westover"—the Judge no longer spoke of him as "the prisoner"—"will present himself here and the court will itself deliver to him—as it is fitting that the court should do in such a case—the papers relieving him, so far as it is possible now to relieve him, of all the consequences of a clearly erroneous accusation and conviction."

When the Judge ceased speaking, Boyd Westover made a profound bow to him, saying simply: "I thank you." Then turning to Towns he said:

"Come, Jack! I'm faint and hungry. Let's go to Tom Griffin's and get something to eat."

Tom Griffin's was a place well known in the Richmond of that old time. Tom himself was a negro slave who enjoyed vastly more liberty than any free man of color ever did in Virginia. Every gentleman in Richmond was his personal friend; so was every aristocratic planter east of the Blue Ridge. Any one of them would have drawn his check in payment for Tom's liberty, if Tom had desired to be free. But Tom Griffin wanted nothing of the kind. He was happy and he knew when he was well off. If his freedom had been bought, he must, under the law, have left his native state, whose people were his friends and whose associations meant to him all that life could mean.

He knew all there was to know of catering and of cookery. Better still, as he phrased it, he "instincted just how to make things good to eat." He had genius, in short, and the fact was recognized and celebrated by every man in Virginia who had a palate and the price—and who enjoyed Tom Griffin's favor. For Tom Griffin's place was no ordinary restaurant. Men of the common herd were not welcomed there. Only those whom he recognized as his friends—and his friendships were rigidly restricted to the aristocratic class—were privileged to sit at Tom's polished old mahogany table, and enjoy sora, or canvas backs or terrapin in perfection. Only such were served with his glorified chine and spare-ribs, his roast turkey or his forequarters of spring lamb. And those who were so privileged could never be persuaded to believe that anybody else in all the world could even by accident serve any viand in such perfection as that in which every viand came from Tom Griffin's expert hands.

Tom probably knew who his master was, but nobody else ever asked. Tom probably paid his master a liberal compensation for his time; he could well afford to do so. For Tom Griffin was rich—so rich that many a young Virginian whose frequent rash expenditures threatened to involve him in argument with his father, found relief in a loan from Tom Griffin's hand, concerning which no papers were passed. These loans were certain to be repaid. They were debts of honor, seeing that as a suitor Tom Griffin—a negro slave—would have had no standing in court.

Tom Griffin had waiters in adequate force, but he never permitted them to serve a gentleman without his personal superintendence. If a gentleman wanted a glass of water during his meal—as even Virginia gentlemen sometimes did—Tom regarded his waiter as a person competent to serve it. The waiter could clear away the used crockery, too, and see to it that lighted wax candles were in place for cigar-lighting purposes. There were other minor offices that Tom permitted to his waiters. But when it came to serving a dish, Tom took the function upon himself.

"You see," he once explained, "the boys is so stupid. If I've laid myself out to have a dish just right, I ain't a goin' to spile all my work by lettin' a clumsy nigger slap-bang it on the table, like as if he was a sellin' fish in the market."

In accordance with his custom, therefore, Tom personally served a dinner that Boyd Westover had not ordered. There were soft crabs to begin with. There was a whole fore-quarter of genuine spring lamb for Boyd to carve at will. There were the earliest peas of the season, secured by Tom Griffin's "System," which consisted in letting all the market gardeners know that he paid higher prices than anybody else for the first and best of every garden's product, and, more important still, that any gardener failing to give him first choice would be cut off his list, a proscription too serious to be faced with composure. There were the first tomatoes of the season, too, and there was everything else that was possible, including a meringe a la créme, black coffee and cigars at the end.

Boyd Westover had ordered nothing of the sort, but Tom Griffin served it all quite as if he had done so, and when it came upon the table Tom busied himself and a corkscrew in opening a dusty, cobwebbed bottle of antique Madeira, saying as he did so:

"Dis is Ann Maria wine, Mas' Boyd, an' dere ain't much of it left in Old Virginia, I reckon. Will you 'scuse me ef I say I ain't paid no attention to your order in gittin' your dinner ready, an' I ain't asked what sort o' wine you wanted? De explanation is dat Tom Griffin is a furnishin' this here dinner an' this here Ann Maria Madeira, as his contribution to de joyful occasion. Gentlemen, I trust your appetites is good."

With that Tom withdrew too hastily for protest or remonstrance. As he went he snatched a napkin from a vacant table, with which to dry his dusky cheeks of the tears that were streaming down them in spite of all his efforts at self-control.

Tom had learned from his customers to speak fairly correct English, and his lapse into the negro dialect of his boyhood on this occasion was the "outward and visible sign of the inward" emotional disturbance that Boyd Westover's experience had wrought in his all-affectionate soul.

Hungry as Boyd Westover had declared himself to be, and tempting as was the dinner that Tom Griffin served, the young man ate with scant appetite, and when the meal was over his friend was anxiously worried.

"See here, Boyd!" he said. "In view of all the circumstances you ought to be the jolliest fellow in Richmond to-day. You've borne up astonishingly during the real stress of this affair. Why should you flunk now that it's all over and you're a victor?"

"I'm not flunking. I'll never flunk, but stoicism costs," answered Westover.

"Just how do you mean?"

"I mean that my determination to bear a bold and unflinching front as it becomes a Westover to do when the penitentiary doors were yawning for me, with lifelong disgrace as my portion, has taken more out of me than you can easily believe. To a man raised in our traditions, the prospect of disgrace and shame is a fearful thing to face. A score of agonizing deaths by torture would have been to me as nothing in comparison with what I have suffered in contemplation of this horror. I have faced the thing as bravely as I could. That much I owed to my name, my caste, my lineage—call it what you will. But my bank account of endurance is running low now. My drafts upon it have been heavy and—well, there have been no deposits to strengthen it."

He was thinking bitterly of Margaret Conway's defection.

"Don't let us talk of that. I'm as nearly on the verge of collapse as a healthy man can be, that's all."

"But you are vindicated, and when your pardon comes this afternoon—"

"Pardon? Yes. For a crime I did not commit. Think of it, Jack. From this hour forth I shall be a man accused, convicted and sentenced for a crime of infamous character, and graciously pardoned for it. It couldn't be worse—except to my own soul—if I were guilty. The pardon undoes nothing but the punishment. It doesn't wipe out the stain. It doesn't—oh, well, you understand. I am free, but my life is ruined. If I were called as a witness in court, the opposing attorney would be free to ask me if I had not been convicted of a felony and sentenced, and I should have to answer yes. Then he could forbid me to explain. The thing is horrible. The law as it stands is infamously unjust. Why should I be a pardoned criminal when I have committed no crime? Why should not the court that convicted me and sentenced me under a mistake have power to undo the wrong by another trial or procedure of some kind? Why should I not be acquitted of a false accusation instead of being 'pardoned' for an offence never committed? No, don't bother to answer. I know the answer already. Such cases are too rare for the law to have provided for them, though it is the law's boast that there is no wrong for which it doesn't provide a remedy. However, let's talk of something else. I'm going off for rest. I suppose this Rocky Mountain matter ought to be looked after. Will you go out there as my representative, under your blanket power of attorney, and do whatever you think best about it? There seems to be money enough in it to pay you all you want in the way of fees, according to your representation."

"I'll go, of course. But I wish you would go instead, or go with me. It would divert your mind, and, believe me, Boyd, you need such diversion more than anything else. Why can't you go?"

"Because I must rest, and because—well, because of many things. Never mind. I'm not going and you are. I'm going a fishing. Draw up all the necessary papers and I'll execute them. Can you get them ready to-night? I want to go away to-morrow morning and forget."

"Where will you go? To Wanalah?"

"No; except for brief preparations. To the mountains. You know I own three or four high mountain tops up in the Blue Ridge, with the swales, called valleys, that lie between. The land is worthless, but the woods up there are full of game and the brooks alive with trout. My grandfather bought the vast tract as an indulgence and my father kept it with a like purpose. There's a shack of some sort up there I believe. If not, I can build one in a half day, and it will interest me to chink and daub it."

Jack Towns sat silent for a time. Then he said:

"I heartily disapprove of your plan. It means solitude, and you need association with men to cure you of morbid and unwholesome feelings."

"But I can associate with men only upon sufferance. You've heard of the person who said: 'The more I see of men, the better I like dogs.' I'm not quite of his mind, but anyhow I'm going up into the high mountains with my dogs, my guns and my fishing tackle. So get all the papers ready, Jack, and let me get away as soon as possible."

Again, Jack Towns sat silent and troubled. After awhile he said:

"Of course you'll go to my house to-night and be my guest so long as you remain in Richmond?"

"Thank you, I will if you'll see to it that no visitors get at me. I want to go to sleep as soon as this thing's over and I'd like to stay asleep forever."

"You're all wrong, but of course as a guest in my house you'll be protected from everything that is reasonably or unreasonably disagreeable to you. But really, Boyd, the people who are sure to call to-night—"

"Yes, I know. They will call to offer congratulations which are in fact commiserations and condolences. I don't care to attend my own funeral in the capacity of chief mourner, just yet. I shouldn't mind the funeral, with myself for the corpse, but I'm not prepared to play the part of chief mourner."

"You're morbid, Boyd."

"Perhaps so, but I'm going to become healthy again. Now listen. I'm going off into the mountains to match my wits with those of the wiliest trout, the shyest deer, the most experienced wild turkey gobblers, and now and then perhaps to try conclusions with a sly old bear. By the time I return to civilization, I'll have decided upon my career. I'm going to do something—I don't know what. But by that time I'll know."

"Good! That's the way to look at things. After all, the strain your stoicism has put upon you hasn't robbed you of your robust manhood, and that is what I feared."

"My dear Jack, I couldn't lose that and go on living. It is only that I must have a little time in which to pull myself together and see what I can do. If your mission to the Rocky Mountains proves that those fellows out there are right, and that a great wealth is ready to my hand, I may turn philanthropist, or I may enter upon great business undertakings which by their employment of multitudes of men at good wages are perhaps the most philanthropic of all endeavors. I don't know. I can't think till I sleep and rest. At any rate while I am recovering tone up in the high mountains of the Blue Ridge, you will find out what monetary tools I have to work with. Theology teaches us that the primal curse was a condemnation to work. It was the primal blessing instead. That's an aside. I have good friends up in the mountains, chief among whom is Judy Peters."

"The Queen of the mountains? I've heard of her. She's an erratic political factor with whom every candidate must reckon, I'm told."

"She's all that. She controls the mountain vote in her district as absolutely as the Superintendent of the Penitentiary was to have controlled me—"

"Now, my dear Boyd, I beg you to put aside that sort of brooding. It's morbid, it's hurtful to your character, it's—"

"Yes, I know. But I'm not pardoned yet, you know, and naturally—never mind. I was speaking of Judy. She doesn't abuse her political power. In many elections she doesn't use it at all. She says to her subjects: 'I ain't choosed 'twixt them two candidates. Choose for yourselves.' But when she does choose and intimates her choice the men of the mountain all vote her way, and their vote makes an end of all uncertainty as to the result of that election. But it isn't only in politics that she rules. A Baptist preacher went up that way once and became pastor of a church. For a while he 'cut a wide swath,' as Judy said. But he made the mistake of offending her majesty by some indiscreet criticism of her. She manifested no displeasure, but on the next Sunday and the next he found a meeting house full of empty benches to preach to. Then he quit, as Judy afterwards explained, 'because his usefulness was at its end.' It's the same way with everything else. Ordinarily she does not interfere, but when she does her interference is instantly effective. It's a common saying up there that 'ef you want to stay in the mountings comfortable like, you don't want to git yourself into Judy Peters's bad books.'"

"On what does her extraordinary influence rest?"

"It would be hard to say. Partly I should say upon her extraordinary sagacity, especially in her judgment of men and her penetration of their motives. My father used to say she had second sight of the Scottish sort. It is certain that no man ever deceives her for long, no false pretense ever endures her scrutiny, and she never falters in her judgments. She is as relentless as Fate itself and as merciless in her dealings with what she adjudges to be wrong. As she doesn't know what fear means, she is equally resolute in her active support of all causes that enlist her sympathy. She is ignorant, as we reckon such things, but her sagacity is well nigh supernatural, and she keeps herself informed on all matters that interest her, with an accuracy that a detective bureau might envy. She is kindly, but not courteous. She hates shams with an elemental intensity. If you are a guest in her house she fulfils every obligation of hospitality, but she tells you no lies either in word or deed. She will lay herself out to serve you with sublime fried chicken and glorified waffles, but if she catches you in a falsehood she'll tell you you are a liar even while she presses the apple butter or the maple syrup upon your acceptance. In brief, Judy Peters is altogether a natural human being, whose elemental passions have never been curbed by convention, whose courage is of the kind that never shrinks from the recognition of truth or from its telling in plain words. If she likes you she will say so. If she dislikes you she will tell you the fact in equally plain words. If she is in doubt about you, she will tell you she 'ain't choosed yit' as to you. That's Judy. Still my description utterly lacks something, I don't know what—personality perhaps. You must know Judy personally if you would understand her. Her malignity, in cases that seem to her to call for it, is well nigh beyond conception in its devilish ingenuity and persistence; her loyalty, on the other hand, stops at nothing that may serve its fortunate beneficiary. She was my father's friend, in her odd way, and she is mine. My father once rendered her a service; I don't know what it was, and she won't tell me. He always said it was a trifle of no consequence; she always answers my inquiries about it by saying:

"''Tain't none o' your business, Boyd, what he done for me, but ef I could 'a' turned these here mountings upside down an' he'd 'a' give the word as how he wanted it done, over the mountings would 'a' gone, you kin bet your bottom dollar on that proposition.'

"She is my friend on my father's account and nothing can change that. If I should try to deceive her she'd denounce me to my face as a liar, but she'd make the mountains too hot to hold anybody else who should suggest such a thing, and she'd go on doing her mightiest in my interest, in spite of my fault. In her way she is a wholesome sort of person for me to meet just now, and I'm going to spend a few days with her, just for the bracing up she'll give me. After that I'll go on up into the high mountains."

So ended the dinner and the conversation. Next morning Westover set out for Wanalah, where he intended to spend a few days giving necessary directions and equipping himself with supplies for his sojourn in the mountains. These consisted of books, mainly, with a bag of corn meal, a ham or two, a few sides of bacon, guns, ammunition, fishing tackle and rough clothing, all of which were loaded into an ox cart, which a negro boy was to drive in leisurely fashion to Judy Peters's. Beyond that, in the climb up the mountainside, oxen would be of less use than bother, and Westover depended upon the long legs and strong arms of mountaineers to manage the further transportation.