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. sion of my conduct which she would have ever exercised , her qualities would have rendered her invaluable. Cornelia, near three years younger, would have been my companion. With her I should have disported among the early flowers of spring, the fuller beauties of summer, and the mature glories of autumn.

But I turn from a picture fraught only with the idlest fancies ! Such felicities were never mine, I never enjoyed a sister's care-I never knew a sister's love since I was old enough to appreciate them. That kindly-that frank- that unceremonious intercourse, associated with sincere mutual regard, which I have witnessed between brother and sister-I have only looked upon to envy. But here I stand by the graves of my sisters-I remember well when they were consigned beneath this turf, and I hastily glance over the cheerless desert through which I have since passed-I am no misanthrope- I am not out of love with life, I see something lonely in it when considered in view of our future state-of our relations to the Deity, and to our species. If a tinge of melancholy affects my character it is but from sympathy with my circumstances. Yet these are causes of sorrow in this accursed world- baffled projects, disappointed hopes, bereavements, thoughts of which sicken the heart. Here was one destined to give a coloring to all my after life. Much, very much influence I feel it to have had on my character, on my happiness hitherto ; much yet it is to have. Yes, to a young man destitute of the meliorating enchantment of a sister's love, many of the purest founts of virtuous feeling remain sealed. Every man of sensibility must appreciate the society of the gentler sex- he will " seek the sympathy of the female heart." Woman is made " the ornament of his happier hours," his solace in adversity. Her placid loveliness smoothes and softens the asperities of his nature. But with whom can the young man associate as with his sister ? Who so watches over his character and conduct ? On whom can he depend as being so faithful to tell him his faults ? And whose admonitions can he so regard as prompted by pure affection and sincere good will ? There is an openness of heart, and a familiarity between brother and sister, which propriety forbids in the intercourse of others. There is a confidence not elsewhere to be found. There can be no suspicion of heartlessness, or art and duplicity in their intercourse ; and while the brother feels that the heart of her with whom he is conversing is free from hypocrisy, his own is made better, and is filled with the holiest delight, as he experiences the overflowings of female love, and witnesses the ingenuous developments of female virtues.

If there is a feeling on earth allied to that of beings above, it is the fervent, devoted love of a sister for her brother- so pure, so uncontaminated with any selfish or unworthy motive. If he is sick, who bends with faithful sympathy over his pillow ? If absent, who looks with

fond and anxious solicitude for his return ? If calumniated, who first appears in vindication of his character ? If vexed with the cares and the disquietudes of life, who pours into his agitated bosom the genial oil of consolation ? Who observes with such solicitous regard, and seeks to correct any impropriety in his conduct ? Next to a mother's unquenchable love that of a sister is pre-eminent. To me, at this time, such love would have been peculiarly desirable-for a father's care and a mother's love I could no more enjoy ! A little more than two years before I had seen my mother consigned to the grave, I could not wish her back. " Afflictions sore long time she'd bore."

I felt that, removed to a better land from a world in which for years she had experienced little but pain, she was now resting in the happy embrace of her Saviour. A few months before my father had gone to join her ; and the wound was still fresh and bleeding in my bosom. I was by his bed side when the lamp of life went out. "In saw in death his eyelids close Calmly as to a night's repose." From them I was now separated. No longer could I enjoy their sympathy and prayers—and must I too be destitute of a sister's ? Oh, when I hear my school-mates tell of going totheir homes, while there is no spot on earth which I can, with propriety, call by that hallowed name —when they exhibit the tokens of affection furnished by a sister's hand, an arrow pierces my heart, "the poison of which drinketh up my spirits." And when among strangers, encountering the rude buffets of the world, realizing " how hard it is to find true sympathy, how few love us for ourselves," I say when in such circumstances, I hear a sister express her deep solicitude for an absent brother, her concern lest sickness should befall him where he must be attended by stranger hands, and her own could not administer to his comfort- lest misfortunes should come upon, and her sympathy could not soothe his heart, and feel that there are no such regards such solicitudes for me, a withering influence chills my soul. Truly, I think, detached from all the sympathies of existence, that, like some abandoned bark, I am driven about on the tempestuous ocean of life. Before me were now the sad mementoes of my blighted joys ; and my spirit instinctively panted for that blessed region into which sorrow and disappointment do not enter, where I might rejoin those I had loved on earth. The sun was fast sinking behind the western hills, and as I had an engagement to spend the night with my early teacher, mentioned above, who lived in the immediate vicinity, I left the grave-yard where were the memorials of my blasted hopes -again " to mingle among the jostling crowd,"-to experience clearer evidence the depth of my misfortune in that early bereavement, the loss of my sisters.


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 state of constant tension in order to be able to meet competition. In Italy, even more than in other countries, order and political stability are indispensable for economic life, for we have no reserves to exploit, and every disturbance affecting the productiveness of work places us at once at a disadvantage as compared with foreign countries.

Those who sow discord and promote disturbances and disorder, jeopardize the country, render general conditions more difficult, bring misery to the workers, and operate against the well-being of Italy. Such conduct in no wise differs from that of the men who fomented sedition among the troops in the face of the enemy and depressed the national spirit of resistance during the war.

I must now a sum up my arguments and come to a conclusion.

I have set forth the admirable work accomplished by the Fascist Government and the merits of its collaborators and supporters. Let us now look towards the future.

To exercize power presents yet greater difficulties that its conquest. To govern is to act, and action inevi-

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.

To him who lives a moving pestilence, Whose foot-print is pollution to the earth, From whom the vilest wretch shrinks back aghast With terror and abhorrence. Now farewell. No, no! I cannot, will not let thee go. I will go with thee ; happier far to share The horrors of the outcast leper's fate Than though the world were mine, apart from thee. How can I live within thy noble halls, And lay me down and sleep in that alcove, On downy pillow, ' neath embroider'd silk,. The golden fringe, of which lies heavily Upon the marble pavement ; while I know That thou art outcast, perishing, perchance. On the bare earth, unshelter'd and alone, With none to aid or soothe thee. I will go And share thy sufferings ."

"It may not be Thy pangs would add to mine an, hundred fold. Could I endure to see thy fair young form Made horrible by this white pestilence ? No-let me have amid my sufferings One consolation when I think of thee, And deem thee crown'd with blessings. " Dost thou faint? Mine arm may not sustain thee ; fair young flow'r How beauteous is thy drooping loveliness. Now while thine eyes are clos'd, and thy rich voice No longer chains my spirit, I will go. Farewell ! Farewell forever! Oh, praise the Lord, Theresa ! Praise the Lord, For he hath heal'd thy Leper. Oh, the bliss Of this embrace ; this sunrise o'er the night Of our long deep despair. The blessedness Of such a waking from the hideous dream Of misery such as ours. Bless thee my wife For thy fond love, and holy constancy To the poor outcast. Heaven reward thy truth ; I have not words to thank thee." "Speak not thus My love, my rescued treasure. Thank not me ;" To God, the merciful, belong all thanks. 1 And the physician whom he sent to thee, He merits at our hands a rich reward. When was the Leper ever cleans'd till now ? Indeed I fear this bliss is all a dream, Or thou a wretch imposing on my love, In my lost husband's name. Forgive the word, I see I am convinc'd. But where is he To whom we owe so much. What can we give That will express our gratitude for all That he has done for us. What shall we give ?" "Our hearts Theresa. We will give our hearts. The man that heal'd me was the Nazarene Abhor'd by our proud rulers, and chief priests, Whose followers are expell'd the synagogues , And hated by our nation. Yet I know That he is the Messiah that should come Of David's royal lineage, and reign A glorious king forever. VOL. II.- 7

49

"To the wild In which I sought to hide my wretchedness From scorn, or heartless pity, came the fame Of this all healing Jesus ; and I felt That he had power to save me, and went forth Trembling with hope to seek him. Oh, my wife Could'st thou but look upon him. Beautiful He is beyond description. Tall and fair, With dark brown locks, parted from his clear brow, Smooth o'er the perfect temples, waving thence In curls of perfect beauty ; and his eye So clear, so powerful, and so full of love, So rich in their expression when they dwell In kind compassion on the suffering poor, Or turn with pride subduing stern reproof On stubborn sin, and haughty arrogance. I look'd upon him, and my very soul Seem'd gushing forth to meet him, as he came In native majesty, serenely great ; Amid the servile multitudes that prest And knelt to kiss his garment. I advanc'd, The crowd gave way, they would not touch a form Of pestilence like mine. Low at his feet I knelt, and humbly supplicated, ' Lord If thou art willing thou canst make me clean.' He look'd upon me with such pitying love, And reaching forth his hand, (oh, what a hand And arm is his) he touch'd me and replied 'I wilt that thou be clean.' Oh, how that touch And voice omnipotent, thrill'd through my soul. Rushing in swelling rapture to my heart, And circling through my veins, while all my flesh Was chang'd to health and beauty. Oh, the bliss ! The thrilling, life-renewing extacy Of that extatic moment, when my soul And mortal body were renew'd and chang'd, By the pure influence of Almighty love. I felt at once that our Immanuel, God shrined in manhood, had perform'd my cure. But as I worship'd him he bade me go Nor speak of Him, but offer to the priest The accustom'd gift. In this I will obey, But I must speak of him, for all my soul Is flooded with his love. Earth never bore The impress of a foot perfect as his, Who walks from place to place, a homeless one Dispensing blessedness in all his ways. His matchless hands impart the richest gifts ; Health to the sick, youth's vigor to the lame, Speech to the dumb, and hearing to the deaf, Sight to the blind, and reason's priceless light To lunatics, and fierce demoniacs. "Oh, could'st thou see him stand serenely calm Amid the rolling billows of the crowd That press around him, while some trembling wretch Is struggling through the throng to reach his feet, Where as he bends mute expectation holds Her empire o'er the attentive living flood, A murmur like the converse of the waves Stirs the dense concourse. Then a mighty shout Swells up to heaven, and melts in echoes down Upon the distant hills. The afflicted one


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 tably implies errors. It is one thing to consider problems in the abstract, it is quite another to face them in their concrete reality. Even success has its dangers, for together with the faithful followers, occasional friends who do not despise the material advantages of success throng round the chariot of victory. It happened that many who for one reason or another followed the banner of redemption with ideal fervour, have now to some extent drawn aside, and not all those who have remained or who joined up subsequently appear to be animated by the same disinterested considerations, This has created a certain sense of uneasiness, which must be eliminated. All men of good will, who realize that above party dissensions is the supreme interest of the Nation, should contribute to the work of consolidation and selection. We must not leave the Government isolated, not because it requires help, but because he who is at the head of affairs should not appear, even if he is not, a prisoner in the hands of a party, and should have a broader basis of support and a wider freedom of manœuvre. It is not enough to expect salvation from heaven; to leave all


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 initiative and all responsibility to others, to keep on one side in order to profit by all advantages, and to criticize what others do, is too easy; everyone should voluntarily contribute his own share, inspired by a healthy spirit of co-operation and giving an example of toleration and disicplinediscipline [sic].

Discipline: that is a virtue which is absolutely necessary at the present time, even more so than in the past. The country realizes that in a transition period exceptional ways and means are necessary, but it is determined that these powers should be exercized in a legal manner by the responsible authorities; it mistrusts, not without reason, anonymous actions, subject to no control, which are carried ontout [sic] to-day in one sense and to-morrow might provoke reaction in a contrary sense, with the effect of destroying that tranquillity which we wish to consolidate, of compromising the results and advantages already attained.

When the State machine was in a condition of dissolution it was necessary that ousideoutside [sic] forces should come into play, but as the machine was gradually repaired this


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 necessity disappeared, and outside forces, even if inspired by the best intentions, may become elements of weakness. Let us grant all the necessary powers, but let them be at the disposal of the head of the State, within the accepted limits. He who goes counter to this principle renders a disservice to his own cause and, far from increasing, tends to diminish the prestige of the leaders.

I speak openly, because I know I am speaking to men who feel the discipline of duty and the spirit of devotion to the country. By following the straight path of legality we cannot fail to reach our goal.

In less than half a century Italy has risen from an age-long oblivion; she has paid for the redemption of her frontiers with her blood. She does not aspire to dominate, but wishes to live wothwith [sic] dignity, subject to no external rule. Her people have but one praiseworthy aspiration: to work.

If the Fascist Government, after having eliminated the threat of Bolshevism, succeeds in securing for the people peace to work, it will have accomplished indeed the greatest and worthiest feat. Let us hope that a clearer


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 vision will allow of the effective union of national forces to bind together all the elements which are soundly working for the good of the country. May this union have a high ideal, because idealism is that great force which achieves great results, and may this ideal be the greatness and prosperity of the country.


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 broke up and dishonoured and destroyed all the Fetishes in which the spirits lived, and cast them out into the surf and died like a man.

Then horror came upon the people when they knew he had done this, and they burnt his house and all things belonging to him, and cried upon the spirits not to forsake them, not to lay this one man's deadly sin at their doors. I rather doubt whether those spirits have come round yet, for Dr. Tompstone wrote to me that last November, just when their yearly plays were in full swing, to make sure of having fine weather for them, Opobo "called in a noted consultant from up river and," says the Doctor with a gracious sympathy for a fellow medical man, "it has rained in torrents ever since. It is very rough on him, as I believe he did his best and sacrificed large numbers of fowls."

In connection with the gods of West Africa I may remark that in almost all the series of native tradition there, you will find accounts of a time when there was direct intercourse between the gods or spirits that live in the sky, and men. That intercourse is always said to have been cut off by some human error; for example, the Fernando Po people say that once upon a time there was no trouble or serious disturbance upon earth because there was a ladder, made like the one you get palm-nuts. with, "only long, long;" and this ladder reached from earth to heaven so the gods could go up and down it and attend personally to mundane affairs. But one day a cripple boy started to go up the ladder, and he had got a long way up when his mother saw him, and went up in pursuit. The gods, horrified at the prospect of having boys and women invading heaven, threw down the ladder, and have since left humanity severely alone. The Timneh people, north-east of Sierra Leone, say that in old times God was very friendly with men, and when He thought a man had lived long enough on earth, He sent a messenger to him telling him to come up into the sky, and stay with Him; but once there was a man who, when the messenger of God came, did not want to leave his wives, his slaves, and his riches, and so the messenger had to go back without him; and God was very cross and sent another messenger for him, who was called Disease, but the man would not come for him either,


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Entrance Examination Papers, 1/6; postage, 2d B.A. Pass 2/6 4d University Calendar, 2/6; postage, 4d

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 a serjeant, about forty years old, and of a morose and gloomy appearance; he was respected by his superiors, prompt and exact in the service, and never would brook an affront. The unthinking called him a sorcerer, and people of a more serious cast of mind talked of his connexion with superior beings, taking great care not to offend that terrible man, whose name was Volkert. In the whole he was a very good sort of a man, never of fended any body, if not provoked, was averse to company, and fond of solitude.

He was reported to have performed many strange and wonderful exploits; an ensign, who had severely chastised him for a slight neglect in his duty, was said to have been deprived ever since of the proper use of his right arm; and a captain, who once had scolded him without reason, to be afflicted with a deficiency in his speaking organs, since that accident had happened: In short, strange things were every where related of Volkert, and in


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 and all facts stated in the certificates.” (Pl.’s Br. at 3 n. 1.) The plaintiff claims such action would be proper because “17 U.S.C. § 410(c) … provides that the weight given to any certificate issued more than 5 years after publication of the work is left to the Court’s discretion.” (Pl.’s Br. at 2 n.1.) I decline the plaintiff’s invitation. See Picture Music, Inc. v. Bourne, Inc., 457 F.2d 1213, 1214–15 n. 3 (2d Cir.) (explaining Register of Copyrights typically allows conflicting claimants to register for renewal without determining validity of claim), ''cert. denied'', 409 U.S. 997, 93 S.Ct. 320, 34 L.Ed.2d 262 (1972); Epoch Producing Corp. v. Killiam Shows, Inc., 522 F.2d 737, 746 (2d Cir.1975) (holding no presumption of validity attaches to certificate of renewal), ''cert. denied'', 424 U.S. 955, 96 S.Ct. 1429, 47 L.Ed.2d 360 (1976); Nimmer § 9.05[D][2], at 9-88 (“explaining span of time between initial publication and copyright renewal should generally preclude renewal certificate from constituting prima facie evidence”).

Therefore, I decline both of the plaintiff’s entreaties. I will not adhere to the old adage that “possession is nine-tenths of the law,” nor will I submit to the minority view that a certificate of copyright renewal is prima facie evidence of the facts stated therein. Instead, I will evaluate each piece of evidence according to its independent worth.

The plaintiff renewed its copyright in The URANTIAUrantia [sic] Book in 1983, by which time the Copyright Act of 1976 had become effective. However, the renewal section under which the book falls, Section 304, is identical to that of Section 24 of the Copyright Act of 1909. Furthermore, as the plaintiff correctly states, “[t]he passage of the [1976 Act] did not alter the definition of a ‘work for hire’ for the purpose of renewing a copyright originally registered under the [1909 Act]. … Thus, whether The URANTIA Book is a ‘commissioned work’ must be decided under the Copyright Act of 1909.” (Pl.’s Br. at 5 n. 4.) See Stewart v. Abend, 495 U.S. 207, 217, 110 S.Ct. 1750, 1758, 109 L.Ed.2d 184 (1990) (holding renewal rights in pre-1978 works require Court to “look to the language of and case law interpreting § 24”); Forward v. Thorogood, 985 F.2d 604, 606 n. 2 (1st Cir.1993) (explaining 1976 Act’s provisions on works for hire operate prospectively).

The 1909 Act provides statutory copyright protection to “all the writings of an author.” 17 U.S.C. § 4 (1976). The Act also extends copyright protection to the “proprietor of any work made the subject of copyright by this title.” Id. § 9. Although the Act never defines the term “proprietor,” it does define the word “author” to “include an employer in the case of works made for hire.” Id. § 26. “The statute represents a codification of the so-called ‘works for hire’ doctrine recognized by the Supreme Court in Bleistein v. Donaldson Lithographing Co., 188 U.S. 239, 23 S.Ct. 298, 47 L.Ed. 460 (1903).” Murray v. Gelderman, 566 F.2d 1307, 1309 (5th Cir.1978). Therefore, one claiming the initial term of copyright must either be “the author of the copyrightable work (i.e., either the individual creator or the employer in the case of works made for hire … or he must have succeeded to the rights of the author through an assignment or other device.”)). [sic] Epoch, 522 F.2d at 743 (citation omitted) (emphasis added).

The right to renew a copyright under the 1909 Act is determined exclusively by Section 24. Although the renewal has been described as not simply an extension of the initial term of copyright, id., but rather the creation of “a new estate”, separate and distinct from the original copyright, the section does utilize the same aforementioned terms and principles. Section 24 states in pertinent part:


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Ipomœa.] about as long as the leaves, 1–3-flowered. Sepals ovate, obtuse. Corolla 1–2 in. diam., broadly campanulate with a somewhat tubular base, purplish or pink. Capsule ½–¾ in. long, ovoid-globose, coriaceous, 2-celled. Seeds large, hairy.—I. pes-capræ, ''Roth. Nov. Sp. Plant. 109; Benth. Fl. Austral.'' iv. 419; ''Cheesem. in Trans. N.Z. Inst.'' xx. (1888) 171.

Prostrate or twining herbs, glabrous or nearly so. Leaves alternate, entire or rarely palmately lobed. Peduncles axillary, 1-flowered; bracts 2, large, persistent, enclosing the calyx. Flowers usually large. Sepals equal or the inner slightly smaller. Corolla campanulate or funnel-shaped; limb plaited, 5-angled or obscurely 5-lobed. Stamens included; filaments dilated at the base; anthers oblong. Ovary 1-celled or imperfectly 2-celled, 4-ovuled; style filiform; stigmas 2, ovate or oblong, flattened. Capsule subglobose, usually 1-celled. Seeds glabrous.

1. C. sepium, R. Br. Prodr.]] 483.—Rhizome long, slender, extensively creeping underground. Stems slender, twining, 3–6 ft. long. Leaves alternate, variable in size and shape, 2–5 in. long, oblong-sagittate or hastate, acute or acuminate, rarely obtuse, cordate at the base with the lobes angular or truncate or rounded, membranous, glabrous or rarely slightly pubescent. Peduncles solitary, 1-flowered, angled or margined, often exceeding the leaves; bracts large, ovate or ovate-lanceolate, enclosing the calyx. Sepals subequal, ovate-lanceolate. Corolla large, 1½–3 in. diam., white or pink. Ovary incompletely 2-celled. Capsule ½ in. diam., globose, apiculate. Seeds smooth.—''A. Cunn. Precur. n. 394; Raoul, Choix, 44; Hook. f. Fl. Nov. Zel.'' i. 183. Convolvulus sepium. ''Linn. Sp. Plant. 153; Hook. f. Handb. N.Z. Fl.'' 197.


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 sentry-box, for fear of being flanked, had the corporal wisely taken his post:—He held the ivory pipe, appertaining to the battery on the right, betwixt the finger and thumb of his right hand,—and the ebony pipe tipp'd with silver, which appertained to the battery on the left, betwixt the finger and thumb of the other—and with his right knee fixed firm upon the ground, as if in the front rank of his platoon, was the corporal, with his montero-cap upon his head, furiously playing off his two cross batteries at the same time against the counterguard, which faced the counterscarp, where the attack was to be made that morning. His first intention, as I said, was no more than giving the enemy a single puff or two;—but the pleasure of the puffs, as well as the puffing, had insensibly got hold of the corporal, and drawn him on from puff to puff, into the very height


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 of the attack, by the time my uncle Toby joined him.

'Twas well for my father, that my uncle Toby had not his will to make that day.

uncle Toby took the ivory pipe out of the corporal's hand,—looked at it for half a minute, and returned it.

In less than two minutes my uncle Toby took the pipe from the corporal again, and raised it half way to his mouth—then hastily gave it back a second time.

The corporal redoubled the attack,—my uncle Toby smiled,—then looked grave,—then smiled for a moment,—then looked serious for a long


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476

2. C. tuguriorum, ''R. Br. ex Hook. f. Fl. Nov. Zel.'' i. 183, t. 47.—Stems slender, prostrate or climbing, often clothing shrubs or trees to a considerable height, glabrous or puberulous. Leaves ½–1½ in. long, broadly ovate-cordate or deltoid, acute or obtusely acuminate, entire or sinuate or angled, sinus at the base broad and shallow, glabrous, membranous. Peduncles usually longer than the leaves, terete or margined; bracts ovate-cordate or orbicular, apiculate, equalling the calyx and enclosing it. Sepals subequal, broadly ovate. Corolla large, 1–2 in. diam., white. Ovary incompletely 2-celled. Capsule ⅓ in. long, broadly ovoid, apiculate. Seeds yellowish-red.—Convolvulus tuguriorum, ''Forst. Prodr. n. 74; Hook. f. Handb. N.Z. Fl.'' 198. C. truncatella, Col. in Trans. N.Z. Inst. xxi. (1889) 95.

3. C. Soldanella, R. Br. Prodr. 483.—Rhizome long, creeping underground. Stems rather stout, 6–18 in. long, rarely more, prostrate and trailing, not twining, glabrous or puberulous. Leaves on petioles 1–3 in. long; blade ½–2 in. diam., usually broader than long, reniform or broadly rounded-cordate, obtuse or apiculate, entire or sinuate, thick and fleshy, sinus at the base broad and shallow. Peduncles solitary, 1-flowered, as long or longer than the leaves; bracts ovate-cordate, obtuse, rather shorter than the calyx. Sepals subequal, broadly ovate, obtuse. Corolla large, 1–1½ in. diam., pink or purplish. Ovary incompletely 2-celled. Capsule large, broadly ovoid, apiculate. Seeds blackish-brown.—''A. Rich. Fl. Nouv. Zel. 200; A. Cunn. Precur. n. 395; Raoul, Choix, 44; Hook. f. Fl. Nov. Zel.'' i. 183. Convolvulus Soldanella, ''Linn. Sp. Plant. 159; Hook. f. Handb. N.Z. Fl.'' 198.


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one comes upon a town, such as Damascus was in those days, such as others of its type are even now in the less-trodden spaces beyond, let him look for the reason of it instead of vexing his imagination. For there never was a town without a reason, let both town and reason be as inconsequential as next to nothing at all. A town cannot live upon itself: there must be somebody around to come for supplies to its stores, to claim the letters in its post office, to stand horses at its hitching-racks.

There was a reason for Damascus by the Arkansas, therefore, although it doubtless seemed remote and perplexing to those who passed by railroad train through that vast gray plain of western Kansas, tipping upward toward the sky. As you shall see in its time and place.

Damascus seemed only the seed of a town in those days, a seed blown far from its parent plant upon the straining winds which never ceased sounding in the ears day nor night; a seed that had sprouted weakly and languished for the need of rain. Here the Arkansas River came down from its mountain beginnings, as clear in the summer days as the sunlight that struck through it, revealing the ripples of its shallow bars. Flat upon the landscape it seemed to lie, as it seems yet to lie, as it will appear to the stranger who sees it for the first time as

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 long as the snows supply its fountains and the willows bend beside it where old trails of forgotten buffalo trace the sad gray slopes.

It was said, and generally believed by people situated in fairer parts of Kansas in those times, that there was not much chance for a man west of Dodge. Based upon appearances, this seemed a conclusion well grounded, for it was a land of emptiness; bald, bleak, swept by never-resting winds. In summer the heat mounted to torrid intensity; in winter the storm pounced with untempered strength upon a land that offered no shelter of forest or wooded brake, except the thin line of cottonwoods and willows along the meandering Arkansas and its feeble, far-spaced tributary streams.

A land filled from horizon to horizon with endless humps of morose gray billowing hillocks, swell after swell, naked of tree and shrub; a land in its very configuration suggestive of the vast vanished herds of buffalo that once fed upon its meager succulence. It seemed that nature had fixed their likeness there in everlasting earth, prophetic, before their time, of their coming; reminiscent of their presence long after their evanishment.

Not much of a chance for a man west of Dodge.

Indeed, it looked that way in those times. But the same had been said of Abilene in its day, when the frontier of civilization was staked there across the Kansas plain; it had been said of Topeka by the first to come with plows and seed of the field into the valley of the Kaw. Adventure laughed at the limitations of the timid; time pulled up the stakes and set them forward and on. For where water runs and grass grows there always is a chance for a man.

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 Nature had done much to keep man out of the country west of Dodge, it is true, with its lack of wood, its scarcity of water; arid fierce summers, long and bitter winters, thin air light in the almost-mountain altitude. Yet man is an adjustable creature, and the beasts which serve him share his adaptability to change and conditions. Cattlemen had found their way far west of Dodge in the day, that you come to Damascus on the creaking wain of this story. They had spread their herds over the solemn hills which seemed to press forever like galloping buffalo down to the margin of the Arkansas; they had found profit in a land from which fear had withheld the unadventurous, and Damascus had risen by the side of the railroad to supply their needs, as well as to profit upon their follies.

The town was not as much then as it came to be in later years, as it is to-day, if you could identify it as you glide past on the California limited, cool bowers of elm trees in its green park, its paved streets swept clean by the wind that changes not with the years.

Yet it had its court house even that far back, it being a county seat. The people of Kansas always were a contentious lot: their history begins in controversies, their commonwealth was founded on a quarrel. Out of that ancient habit they always have been a great people for having court houses handy for the settlement, or prolongation, of their difficulties, as it may transpire after they bring them within the doors. The first thing they did was vote bonds for a court house whenever a few of them got together on the prairie and organized a county. It is altogether likely there are more court houses to the man, and better ones, in Kansas than any other state in the union.

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 Around this court house in Damascus, built of brick, although there was white limestone fit for palaces and railroad bridges close at hand, the town clustered its few dozen dwellings and flat-nosed business fronts. Damascus, being on the front of things, was a sort of permanent railroad camp in addition to its importance as a cattle-lands center. On its skirts there were settlements of dusty tents to shelter man, woman, and the inevitable result of such conjunction; where baled hay was piled high, and raw-boned mules stood hitched to long, unsheltered mangers chopping the sod to dust with stamping hooves.

Not a lovely place at all, this town; no umbrageous elm trees in that day along its sun-warped walks and dusty streets. If there was a flower of any kind within the confines of the place, it was a wild hardy one that wheel and hoof, and ground-gripping Kansas feet had spared. Somebody had set catalpa trees around the court house square, but the life had perished out of them when they had come no higher than the brim of a man's hat. A few of the dry, sad, twisted little trunks remained there still.

People were not thinking of ornamentation and beauty in Damascus in those days; only of the belief that a man hadn't much of a chance west of Dodge. Such of them as called it home were forging their efforts to hold on in the face of great natural odds, magnified by tradition and report.

The lights were out at Dodge City; the notorious characters who had given the town an infernal fame throughout the country were under the buffalo grass or scattered far. County attorneys were beginning to grow incor-

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 ruptible in western Kansas; the state prohibitory law, which had stood a dead letter in that part of the state since enactment, was beginning to be enforced. These two conditions supplied the fuel for a last flare-up in Damascus, out on the very edge of things as it lay. The prosecuting attorney of that county was not an incorruptible man. He was one, at least, who saw a big chance for a person of his stripe lying around loose west of Dodge, and immediately proceeded to turn it into cash.

The result was that Damascus was just about as wide-open as lawlessness could pry it. Not so violently picturesque as Dodge had been; not so romantically gory. Yet trouble never was so far out of sight that a man could not find it if so bent. Now and then one made the discovery. Not always with happy finale.

Now another kind of adventurers were coming into that land which had felt successively the feet of the soldier, the railroad builder, the stockman, and the scum of the earth which hung parasitically upon them, sweepings which the broom of the law had purged from the threshold of well-regulated society. These newcomers were adventurers of the soil, men who came singly, with eyes far-set, as if they had followed elusive hope from the old places to that frontier, doubt upon them that they had overtaken it yet; who came with young wives at their sides, fresh in the vigor of united courage; who came old and stress-driven, out of the long, long road set with abandoned hearthstones, markers in their progression of defeat; who came in the strength of middle life, ruddy and bearded, with stripling sons and half-ripe daughters, and little ones bulging the canvas of their

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 wagon-tops, as the Goths came to the Danube and knocked at the doors of Rome.

These home-hunters on the great tide that always has set the adventurers and the homeless of humanity sweep ing into the west, were as alien to that raw country as fruit to the desert. That was a time of great unrest among the landless of the older states, the tenant farmers, small landholders, cramped and hopeless of better things. An infectious courage seemed to have swept the country that spring, which resulted in the breaking of old moorings, the uprooting of old ties, and a general rush to the wide unpeopled rim of western Kansas.

It was an unprecedented tide of emigration, even for that state, where the phenomenal is the rule; it carried farther than agricultural enterprise ever had dreamed of penetrating before. If these brave pioneers ever had heard of the saying that there was not much chance for a man west of Dodge, they were undismayed by it, and unchecked. At any rate, there was no other place left for them to go. East of Dodge the best of it was taken; to the west there was plenty of room for freedom and a home. Men live in Iceland for no other reason than they are free.

Damascus had its dusty beginning at the railroad, where the little dark-red depot stood across the mouth of the principal street. This was called Custer Street, in honor of the commander of the historic Seventh Cavalry, who had been the government's besom on that wild highland plain years before, sweeping the savages away, making ready for the peaceful tide of homeseekers which had been so long in sending its crest to the last Kansas frontier.

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 Custer Street led from the railroad station past great tiers and ranks of railroad ties, which gave off an astringent smell of fresh oak; past stores of gray steel rails, raw from the rolling-mills, built up in platforms with a symmetrical permanence as if to remain so forever; past the livery stable, with a whiff of horses and hay, and on to its end in the public square, into which it emptied all its consequence, however great that may have been.

At this confluence one found the West Plains hotel on one hand; the White Elephant saloon on the other. Across the square the flag waved high and hopefully above the little building of raw pine planks that housed the most important institution in the town, the United States land office, where busy deputies labored early and late over sectional maps, and records of those who came to draw their chance in a land where there was said to be no chance.

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this scene of Damascus, when the sun was red on the rim of the world one April evening, there arrived a stranger whose stride was so swift it seemed he must be hastening on in the fear that whatever slim chance there might be for a man west of Dodge would be used up before he could arrive. He carried an overcoat across his arm, a strapped suitcase with swelled sides in his hand.

There was something far more eager and alert about this stranger than the general drift of men who came to Damascus, although he seemed to be an indoors man who had not straightened his back from wrestling with the soil to come to that country looking for land. But there was something in his eye; he seemed to have it just before him as he poled along toward the hotel. Some of the loafers along the way said he looked like he'd been sent for to put out a fire.

At the corner of the square in front of the White Elephant, the stranger stopped, put his over-packed valise on the ground to rest his arm, and stood looking around the town, and such of the country beyond it as he could see. Not with the undecided, dazed look of a man who had come to the end of the road and did not know which way to turn, but with something of a glad expectancy, a swelling eagerness, as if he had made that

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 pause only to rest a moment, when he intended to gather himself and break forward faster than before.

He appeared to be smiling, although his face remained set, his lips immobile. It was that light of great eagerness, or great ambition, or great hope, in his eyes that seemed to illumine his face with pleasure. In a little while he took up his heavy luggage and crossed over to the hotel.

Jim Justice, proprietor of the West Plains hotel, was sitting on his porch in a chair bottomed with hickory bark, in the very spot where he would be found, from that time of the year forward, until the wind began to roll tumble-weed in the autumn, and whip clouds of dust against his windows in stifling assault. Jim's chair-posts had notches worn into the side of the house where he leaned; the hinder legs had sockets drilled into the floor of the porch. He was anchored in the serene comfort of proprietorship; he would no more lower his tilted chair to rise and meet a guest than he would stand on his head in the middle of the road.

Justice had been a Missouri bushwhacker in the days of the Southern rebellion. While he had been a rebel in spirit, it was a spirit small in proportion to his body, altogether inadequate to the task of carrying him out into the open to uphold his sentiments. Those days of brush-skulking were far behind Jim now, to be sure, but the habit of them endured as close-fitting upon him as his own skin. While he might not shoot a man from ambush any longer, he would take under-handed advantage of him in every other way.

Justice was a thick, short man, rounding out like a pigeon in front, standing with something of a pigeon

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 strut about him; a man vain of his parts and his properties, illiterate, bombastic, full of words. He had a walrus-like dignity about his face, more the dignity of impassibility than wisdom, not altogether unpleasant in its well-nourished rotundity. He was a brown and toughened man, having interests on the range which carried him abroad in sun and storm. His heavy gray mustache hung like a curtain over his mouth, his fat cheeks having the appearance of being distended always to puff it out of the way of his words.

The traveller passed Jim without as much as an eye turned in his direction, entered the office, where the winter stove still stood in its desert of tobacco-sprayed sand, its immense pot red and sullen from the ardor of past fires. The stranger paused a moment, questioningly, just within the door, seeing the place empty; advanced toward the counter, where the register lay spread beside a showcase displaying cigars.

Jim Justice retained the dignity of his repose outside the door, proclaiming, by his attitude, to the public of Damascus that he was contemptuous of business, especially business that passed so much importance with such indifference. Meantime, the stranger was looking around on the dingy discomforts of that frontier hotel.

There was a large map of Kansas on the wall, flanked by pictorial calendars of rival St. Louis breweries. These were very large, bright-colored oleographs, displaying ladies in startling undress, as if to suggest to the beholder the thought that beer and indecent exposure were to be associated, from what trade reason not revealed. A brown-painted, blistered wainscot almost the height of a man lent a cloudy gloom to the cheerless place, which the

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 row of chairs drawn back against the wall increased. It seemed as if these uninviting chairs had discharged the last of their guests from their crude, curved arms; that the business of the house was concluded and sealed. A little stock of tobacco in sacks and caddies filled the shelf behind the counter. There was a smell of lye; the boards of the floor were leached by it, with dark strips, where the joints had gathered greasy sweepings, running like column rules of a newspaper between.

Justice came in presently, placing himself behind the counter with something the manner of a high judge disposing himself to hear the plea of inferior counsel in a despised cause.

Judging him by his baggage, Jim did not rate the guest as first class. This single piece of luggage the traveler had put down in the middle of the floor, where its battered and kicked condition was apparent to the hotel man's critical eye. No man of consequence stuffed all his belongings into one suitcase, Jim Justice believed. He adjusted his small mental machinery to give the fellow a reception fitting the outward appearance of his bag.

The guest appeared to be either indifferent to the presence of the landlord, or too rustic to know what such appearance behind the counter implied. He stood near his bag, hands in his breeches pockets, looking at the pictures on the wall as if absorbed in a comparative study of brewers' art. Justice sized him up as a timber cruiser estimates a tree, scanning him for all that could be cut out of him in a sharp and frowning sweep of his bristle-shaded eyes.

Not much to him; just an ordinary gangle-shanked farmer who had been working in town through the winter.

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 Jim thought. A tall fellow, broad in the shoulders but rather flat, the kind that cannot be worn out on a job nor left behind in a race; bony and stringy-muscled, a look about his legs that suggested boots. Dark, not the kind of a man that bleaches working in a livery stable or store; big nose, hard, bleak-looking cheek-bones that looked as if they had been hammered and had stood it pretty well, and were up for more hammering if it came along.

That much Jim noted, taking the man side-on. It was at that point in the inventory that the stranger turned. Jim Justice felt as if somebody had opened a door and a cold breeze had struck him in the face. It was the man's eyes that gave him this unpleasant start. They reminded Jim of the eyes of the judge back in Clay county, Missouri, before whom he had been taken to stand trial once for stealing a horse. Jim had thrown the crime upon his partner and come clear, but he always shivered when he remembered the mind-reading eyes of that judge.

"The guest pushed back his broad-brimmed black hat, a regular Missouri hat, Jim thought, resenting it somehow, just why he did not know. Only that it seemed lawyer-like, even judicial, creased sharply in that manner, its shadow over the stern features of this unaccountable, and not too welcome guest. Hair as black and straight as an Indian's, thought Jim. Needed the shears laid to it. Kind of a judge's coat, too, dang him. Long, nearly down to his knees. He kept one hand in his breeches pocket, like he was going to pull out a pair of brass knucks and smash a man between the eyes.

"Something you wanted?" Jim inquired.

"Can I get accommodations for the night—maybe sev-

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 eral days?" the traveler inquired, his voice deep and gentle, but with that judicial note in it exactly as Jim had expected to hear.

Jim was resentful. This thing was working out too unpleasantly all around. He could afford to be ugly and bullying with his guests, having no competition.

"What do you suppose I'm runnin' this ranch for?" he asked, whirling the register around, scowling as if the answer to his question were in his look, and that answer was robbery and murder of impertinent upstarts.

"To make money, I'd say," the stranger answered, unmoved by the landlord's sneering interrogation.

The reply mollified Jim a little. It had been given in such even, unmoved, unconcerned tone; the stranger had taken the pen so casually. He must not be as much of a rustic as at first supposed. Traveled around some; agent for something. Maybe some kind of a detective, dang his nickel-plated eyes!

"I might be runnin' it for profit anywheres else but this dern-blasted country," said Jim. "There ain't no show for no man to make money out of no hotel this fur west of Dodge. I'd sell to-morrow if I could run acrost a bigger fool than I am."

The stranger was so little interested in this complaint against the country that he did not glance up from the page where he was entering his name. Out of long practice in upside-down reading, Jim followed the pen as the stranger wrote:

"I used to know a Hall that run a sawmill in Spickardsville, Missouri," said Jim, coming a little nearer now in

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 his mental attitude, seeing the guest had a common, human name. "I don't suppose you might be related?"

"No telling; it's a big family."

"Blowed up and killed one of the boys about your age. Aimin' to stay here some time, you said?"

"A day or two, maybe longer."

"Not much of a country for canvassin' in," Jim informed him, ready to talk to any length when he could knock the land that gave him his living. "People's comin' here in droves, but they ain't the kind to sell books or enlarged pictures to. Poor as snakes; not enough money, most of 'em, to buy grub to hold 'em over till they make a crop—if they ever do make one in this daddasted country, which I doubt like misery."

"I'm not interested in spreading either literature or art," the stranger said, his face as solemn as the back of a fiddle, Jim thought.

"I thought you might be one of them college students startin' out to sell something, they wander out here sometimes, but you're old for a student—thirty-five, I'd judge."

"You're near enough to it," Andrew Hall replied, leaving it worse than if he had said nothing at all, for all the satisfaction Jim found in it.

"Horse liniment don't go out here, nor insurance, nor chromos to hang on the wall, 'less you git 'em for advertisement, free gratis, like I got them of mine. A feller was through here last fall with foldin' lightnin' rods he carried in a valise, but he never sold none of 'em that I ever heard of."

"I don't handle them," said Hall. His face remained as solemn as before, but there was a grin in his eyes, as Jim described the humorous softening. Jim liked him a

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 little better for that. Curiosity had hold of him now like an itch.

"We ain't got no use for a dentist this fur west of Dodge," Jim speculated aloud again. "People's borned with teeth out here and never loses 'em—they've got all the teeth they need. What's worryin' most of 'em is gittin' something to chaw between 'em."

"I expect that's the big question everywhere," Hall agreed.

He went to the window, where he stood looking out, his long legs spread a little in a rather ungainly way, hands in his pockets, the skirts of his black coat held back in that lawyer-like fashion of parting the curtain to display the watch-chain and vest.

"If you're lookin' for a business openin' this hotel's for sale," Jim suggested.

"Not at all," Hall replied indifferently. "I'm not a—business man, Mr ?"

"Jestice," prompted Jim.

"Mr. Justice. Thank you; hope to know you better."

"Lookin' at you," Jim replied, in his most elegant barroom style. "Just out here to take your pleasure and look around, heh?"

"I expect to settle here, Mr. Justice, for a while, at least. I'm an Esculapian."

"A which?"

"Esculapian; a plain Esculapian."

"Might as well be a ruffled one for all the difference it'd make to me," Jim declared, highly resentful, feeling that the guest was poking covert fun at him, which was not altogether wrong.

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 "In other words, I'm a physician. I'm the railroad doctor."

Hall had turned to look at Justice as he revealed himself in language plain to the country west of Dodge. He was grinning, humorously and expansively, as if it might be some kind of a lark, out of which he expected to get a lot of fun.

"The hell you say!" Jim exploded in astonishment, being too shallow to receive the shock of a surprise without considerable splash.

"That's about it."

"Company doctor, heh? Old Doc Ross has been 'tendin' to the company cases here for two or three years. Does he know he's fired, do you reckon?"

"I don't know about that, but I suppose it's likely. I never heard of the gentleman."

"Bumped old Doc Ross out of his job, heh? Never heard of Old Doc Ross?"

"I never did. Is he especially famous in this part of the country?"

"He used to be a fit doctor, travelin' around with a wagon. Had a sign painted on the side of it: 'Old Doc Ross, He Cures Fits.' I remember the day he drove up here in that wagon. I don't reckon we had more than forty people in this town then."

"He must have found it fit headquarters to settle down here," Hall said, holding no high opinion of Old Doc Ross from this public fame.

"Well, if all of us didn't have fits he made us think we had," Jim said, laughing over the recollection, reddening in the heat of his mirth like a turkey gobbler. "Old Doc Ross can convince any man, woman or child they've either

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 got fits, have had 'em or will have 'em before long. He says fits is at the bottom of all human cussedness and diseases, but when I figger back I can't recall of anybody ever throwin' a fit here in Damascus, and I've been here since it started."

"How much a bottle was it?"

"Five dollars," Jim replied, impressively. "I guess the price had a good deal to do with folkses' confidence in it. He's give up the fit business now, settled down to regular practice."

"He's probably an infernal old quack, and no doctor at all."

"I'd go light on spittin' out things like that here in Damascus if I intended to stay over night," Jim cautioned. "No, you're off there. He's a good doctor, good as they make 'em, if you can ketch him sober. He's been on a tear now four or five days. Wouldn't wonder if it was the news of gittin' fired out of that railroad job started him off."

"He may be consoling himself for the loss of the job," Hall said indifferently, plainly indicating that Old Doc Ross was a creature beneath his consideration.

"He used to practice back in Dodge till it cooled down too much for him," Justice explained. "They say he put a good many men out of business with his gun, but I don't know, personal. All I know is he's put hot embers under the feet of a couple of doctors and one dentist that tried to settle here."

"He seems to be a picturesque old villain," Hall commented, entirely undisturbed by this report.

Hall had faced to the window again, where he stood lifting himself to his toes with slow, easy movements ex-

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 pressive of great strength and elasticity of limb. It exasperated Justice to behold him so unmoved by this account of Old Doc Ross' savage disposition in the face of rivalry.

"I wouldn't like to stand in the boots of the man that'd come to root Old Doc Ross out of that good-payin' job," Justice said, adding seriousness to the declaration by expelling his breath with hissing sound through his drooping mustache.

"I guess nobody's going to be murdered over it," Dr. Hall replied.

"I wouldn't be too dam' sure, mister. Married man?"

"Not yet."

"Lucky for your wife you ain't. It ain't no place to bring a woman to, starvation country like this west of Dodge."

"It looks pretty good to me—pretty good," said Dr. Hall, in that provocative, mild, serenely satisfied way of his. Jim thought he said it like the words of a taunt repeated by a vexatious boy.

"Maybe it won't look so dam' pleasant to you after you've met Old Doc Ross!" Justice nagged.

Dr. Hall swung around from the window, confronting Justice again in that judicial, breath-cutting, abrupt fashion of his, hands in his pockets, the skirts of his long coat held back.

"Doctor Ross is free to continue his business of curing the men, women and children of Damascus of fits in his notable and established style, Mr. Justice. I'm not here to take a single patient out of his hands. I'm the railroad doctor; I'm hired and paid by the year for my

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 services. I haven't the slightest intention of setting up opposition to your notorious Doctor Ross."

"That may help some," Jim admitted, but with a reservation of doubt.

"I want to buy a horse—"

"What do you want a horse for if you ain't goin' to practice around?"

"Because I take my exercise that way. Do you know of anybody that's got a good gelding for sale?"

"Yes, you can buy a crackin' good mare from Ed Kraus, the liveryman. Mares stand this country better than geldings. The hot wind don't seem to pull 'em down so hard."

"I prefer a gelding," said the doctor, in his sure and stubborn way.

He spoke like a man who was certain within himself that he was right on all questions, and was not to be turned aside for the consideration of anybody's opinion, nor taken in on anybody's scheme. That was the way Justice sized him up, forming a definite hope at the same time of seeing him brought low, and made a by-word in the scoffing mouths of Damascus.

"I reckon you can find one," Jim returned, coldly, to indicate that his interest in the matter had faded out with the possibility of a commission from Ed Kraus.

"No doubt," Hall agreed, dismissing it lightly, as if it were of no consequence at all.

Justice could have growled. Resentment filled him; indignation gorged his plump face with hot blood. This fellow was altogether too sure of himself to get along in Damascus. They didn't want educated fools of this kind

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 in the country west of Dodge. They were the kind that built high schools for the taxpayers to pay for, and agitated around and closed up the saloons. They'd have to be frostbitten in the bud, and that minute Jim had no frost on his breath. Fire, rather, which gathered in his bristled old badger eyes.

"Do you want supper?" he asked, implying that it would be an unwelcome desire, the desire of one aspiring to a place above him and a privilege belonging to his betters.

"Why not?" Hall returned, in that self-sure, serenely adjusted way of his. He still had his hands in his trousers pockets, the long coat divided back from his lean body, pencils showing in his vest pocket, the braid of his watch, with a gold swivel, looped across his breast.

"A lot of fellers stay at hotels to make a front and take their meals out in cheap joints," Jim replied. His words were acrimonious as alum, insulting without diguise. The guest turned to the window again, feet wide apart to adjust his stature to a pane from which the winter's grime had been rubbed.

"Not a bad scheme," he said, giving it a genial endorsement, as if to say it had not come into his mind to do it, but that he would not be above trying it on if he liked, with no consideration for the profit or opinions of any hotel keeper whatever.

"I'll let any man that tries it on me know his room's better than his company," Jim declared. "I've done it before to-day."

"I think you're wrong there, entirely wrong."

Hall stood lifting himself to his toes, settling back to his heels; lifting, settling. It was a kind of preoccupied

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 gymnastics, a habit of his argumentative mood, perhaps, which was a burning irritant to Jim Justice's already inflamed humor.

"If a man ain't got the money to set in at my table I don't want him sleepin' in my sheets," Jim blustered, intent on coming to a rupture with this unwelcome guest at any odds, it appeared. "Let any man I boot out of this hotel go and try to git a bed anywhere else in town, and see where he lands!"

Whether Andrew Hall appreciated the tragedy of such a situation, Justice was not to know at that time. Before the guest could have uttered any comment, if he had intended to do so, a sudden burst of shooting, attended by yells and a rush of galloping horses in the street directly in front of the hotel, broke the sunset peace of the town.

This noisy demonstration sweeping past his door seemed to strike Jim Justice witha tremendous fear. He turned from peering through the dusty window at the end of his counter, the red embers of anger dying in his fat cheeks as if doused by a sudden rain. He grabbed a canvas bag that lay with its mouth dangling from a little compartment of his open safe, his eyes bulging, his erect gray hair charged with the prickling shock of his fright.

"Git in there!" he directed, waving toward the open door that revealed the dining-room and interior of the house. "It's that Simrall gang!"

As he delivered this warning Justice stooped behind the counter and disappeared. Hall supposed he was reaching for his gun. He waited for Justice to reappear armed to defend his property and life against a raid of outlaws, greatly astonished and mystified when he did not come up

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 again from his dive. Hall concluded that the hotel keeper was crouching behind a bullet-proof barrier, or that he had gone to the cellar by a secret opening prepared for such emergencies. The noise was drawing off toward the farther side of the square. Curious to learn what it was about, Hall went to the street.

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was a line of hitching-racks around the dusty plot in which the court house stood, like a fence dividing that seat of dignity from the iniquitous and worldly institutions which hemmed it on every side. There were wide gaps in this line of racks, through which footfarers passed in and out of the court house doors, or on short cuts on other business through the square. Between hitching-racks and business houses a broad roadway stretched, dusty and muddy by turns, according to the caprice of nature.

At this hour of the April day when Andrew Hall went to the door of the West Plains hotel to see what the shooting and yelling was about, the roadway was gray with a thin coating of dust that had been mud but a little while before. It was a hard road, resounding almost like a pavement under the feet of the three horses which their riders were holding in what seemed to be a neck-and-neck race around the deserted square.

These riders were doing all the yelling and most of the shooting, as they appeared to have chosen a bad hour for putting on a demonstration in the square of Damascus. Whatever the cause of their animosity, Hall concluded it must lie against the town, and not individuals, as they were shooting impartially at everybody's business front as they passed. Some of their shots crashed windows, the

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 tinkle of the falling glass sounding plainly in the turmoil of their assault; more of them seemed to find no mark at all, conspicuous as the targets stood.

Now and then somebody fired from a window or door; now and then a man appeared suddenly on the sidewalk, to wheel and run as if to arm, all in the manner of people who had been taken by disadvantageous surprise. The three riders galloped around the square in a headlong haste that seemed as if they must have accepted somebody's dare to do the trick, and must get it over with as quickly as possible. Before the citizens could assemble to check their defiant insult, they had rounded the last corner and were galloping again toward the hotel, coming back into the road by which they had entered.

At this moment Hall saw an elderly man come out of the court house door, and stand at the top of the short flight of broad wooden steps, a questioning alertness about him, as if he had been disturbed at some late official task by the unfriendly noise. He leaned forward a little, in attitude of cautious defense, the skirt of his long frock coat pushed back as if his hand rested on a weapon.

Hall could see him plainly, scarcely fifty yards' space lying between them, even to the sharp, concentrated expectancy of his face. A remarkable figure, tall and bony, his long black coat striking to his knees, his long white hair sweeping down to his shoulders in ringlets, a little dab of white beard on his lip, a long, pointed mustache extending beyond the outline of his dark, thin face.

This extraordinary old gentleman stood on the little landing before the broad door of the court house, which stood open behind him, bending in that watchful attitude

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 of defense, hand on the weapon under his coat. The three riders broke around the corner of the court house, two of them pulling up their horses to reload their guns for a parting salute to Jim Justice's windows as they rode out of town.

The one in the lead gave a yelp like a hound picking up a hot trail when he saw the venerable figure before the court house door. He waved his companions forward, reined his horse up sharply, fired. The old gentleman had his gun out, giving the fellow on the horse as good as he sent, with no damage on either side that Hall could see. The other two invaders came up, their horses raising so much dust that the immediate proceedings were obscured to Hall, whose station before the hotel gave him an oblique view of the court house steps.

At the next clear sight Hall caught of him, the defender of the town's honor was down, lying as though he had slipped at the top step and slidden. His body was presented full length to the three shooters, his feet on the ground, his white hair on the topmost step. He was making a vain effort to prop himself to his elbow and lift his pistol, the three scoundrels cracking away at him in what seemed to Hall a most unsportsman-like spirit, to allow for even a just provocation.

Without a thought of his own danger in meddling in a quarrel that might have as much merit on one side as the other, Hall ran into the road on the impulse of his resentful indignation. He only considered that this was an old man, whose white hair had been brought down to desecration by a trio of questionable courage. He shouted to the old man's assailants to stop shooting as he ran diagonally across, heading for the court house steps.

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 When the three invaders saw that the man dashing into the square was unarmed, they held up their shooting, but only long enough to make sure his errand was one of mercy to the object of their assault. Hall was still several rods distant from the wounded man when they began shooting again, the impingement of their bullets against the brick walls and wooden steps as plain to him as raindrops in a field of corn.

Hall ran crouching, reaching the foot of the steps untouched. The old man appeared to have been struck again. He had collapsed from his outstreched rigidity in a broken crumple of dusty black coat and pure white hair, down to the bottom of the steps. His body was propped in a half-sitting posture by his right elbow in the angle of the bottom tread; his legs were doubled under him, his head was bent, the white veil of his long hair falling over his face. From all appearances he was dead, pistol still gripped in his hand.

As Hall bent over the old man he felt a bullet strike his hat; saw it fall brim upward, and flip over as if somebody had jerked it with a string when another bullet clipped it, not a yard from where he stood. He lifted his hand to show his pacific intention and unarmed state, turning his face toward the shooters, rising a little out of his stooping position over the fallen man. A bullet slapped the skirt of his long coat as if an insolent finger had flicked it in a challenge to fight.

"Cut that out!" Hall yelled, straightening up, shaking his fist in ridiculous menace, mad to the backbone, careless, if not entirely thoughtless, of his danger.

One man was doing the shooting in Hall's direction at that moment, the other two having advanced to the

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 middle of the road in front of the saloon, where some not overly valiant spirit had been throwing a shot now and then at them over the swinging door. Now men with guns were coming down the street, pitching a running shot or two ahead as they came. It was time to leave that exhilarating diversion of shooting up a town. The two raiders out in the road yelled to their companion and rode off, slamming a few shots into Jim Justice's hotel as they passed.

The fellow who had been cracking away at Hall was either a very vindictive man, or felt that his reputation was likely to suffer from all that shooting with so little damage. He ignored the warning shouts of his companions and, persistent scoundrel that he was, charged at Hall, his gun lifted to throw in an effectual parting shot.

The sight of the fellow coming clattering toward him down the gravel walk leading to the court house door, pistol lifted in that expressive gesture of determination, raised Hall's fighting temperature till it foamed over the sides of the pot. He was so mad that odds and perils were obliterated from consideration as he looked around for something loose to grab.

There was nothing but the bricks lining the gravel walk, set obliquely to present a serrated border, and they were bedded in cement. And straight down the middle of the walk this ruffian was coming to put a finish to that incidental of his busy day. There was no time to kick a brick loose, no time to cast around. In a panic of desperate chagrin over finding himself unprovided to meet this pressing exigency, Hall backed up against the court house steps. He saw the big pistol still gripped by the

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 time;—Give me hold of the ivory pipe, Trim, said my uncle Toby—my uncle Toby put it to his lips,—drew it back directly,—gave a peep over the horn-beam hedge;—never did my uncle Toby's mouth water so much for a pipe in his life.—My uncle Toby retired into the sentry-box with the pipe in his hand.

—Dear uncle Toby! don't go into the sentry-box with the pipe,—there's no trusting a man's self with such a thing in such a corner.

Beg the reader will assist me here, to wheel off my uncle Toby's ordnance behind the scenes,—to remove his sentry-box, and clear the theatre, if possible, of horn-works and half moons, and get the rest of his military apparatus out of the way;—that done,


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 old man who had fallen, its long barrel pointing down pathetically in his nerveless grasp, and thought of it for—the first time as a ponderable article applicable to the needs of that perilous moment.

Hall grabbed the gun, whirling to meet the raider, a feeling of prickling exultation, of hair-lifting defiance, sweeping him refreshingly. The fellow's horse squatted and skated over the bricks as he pulled it up to veer off and bring his gun arm to the clear. It was a moment of confusion in which the rider was disconcerted in his scheme, and that was the moment when Andrew Hall, swinging the heavy pistol by the long barrel, just as he had snatched it from its owner's hand, let it drive at his assailant's head.

There was no aim about it; just the rough calculation one makes in throwing a rock, but not more than four yards divided the men, and Hall's calculation was good. The bandit, or whatever he was, heeled backward over his cantle, where he swayed a breath, and slumped off to the ground. His horse gathered its legs and galloped away, reins flying, stirrups thumping its sides.

Hall piled himself on the prostrate ruffian, the feeling of outrage he had suffered, a neutral and peaceably disposed man, growing in his heated senses every moment. He had the scoundrel by the neck, bony knees pinning his arms to the ground, when several men came running up eager to relieve him of the responsibility for any further punishment.

It was Bud Sandiver, Hall heard somebody say, an awesome respect in his voice. There was blood on his forehead, whoever he was, where Hall's sinewy arm had slammed that desecrated old gentleman's pistol. The

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 fellow was coming out of it. They upended him, where he scowled bloodily at his captors, and tied his hands with the blue silk handkerchief he wore about his neck. Hall turned away from him at that point, his interest in him being concluded. He found the patriarch huddled at the bottom of the steps still breathing, although he had got a bullet through the lung.

Jim Justice had come out of his retreat, money untouched, hearty life illuminating his face again. He held the door open for them to carry the wounded defender of the town under the shelter of his questionably hospitable roof. Somebody told Hall the wounded man was Major Bill Cottrell, county recorder and treasurer. They stretched the old fellow on a bed, and some one went off on the jump to summon Old Doc Ross.

Hall returned to the hotel office, thought of supper dispersed by his adventure among the bullets in the square. Several men were there, talking with considerable excitement; others were collected on the hotel porch, where Jim Justice's chair stood like an abdicated throne. Hall went outside, wondering what had been the motive in the dash of the three shooters, and the reason for their animosity toward Major Bill Cottrell. He noted that the men in the office stopped talking when he appeared, some of them grinning in an unmistakably friendly way, but exchanging glances and grins between themselves which had another meaning, unaccountable to him.

While standing outside the door, noting the sudden animation of the town which this foray had awakened, Hall was approached by a man who offered his hand with a familiar grin, introducing himself as Burnett. He was a man of medium height, about Hall's age, that is to say

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 somewhat past thirty, stocky in appearance on account of his thick shoulders and slightly bowed legs. From the familiar deference shown him, Hall concluded that he was of some importance in the town.

Burnett was a fair man, tender-skinned as a faro dealer, with a little brown mustache and a continual smirk, which might have been a reflection of his satisfaction with himself and life as he found it, or a sneer at foolish persons who went up against his game, whatever that game might be. That he was a gamester of some kind Hall was certain at the first glance, for he carried about him that outward swagger of a man best described as a four-flusher. He was dressed flashily in a suit of small white and black checks, current in frontier places of that time among gamblers and come-on men. There was a large clear stone in his necktie that had all the appearance of a costly diamond; there were others of the same brilliance in rings which he wore on the third finger of each hand.

"You can sling a gun, all right, Hall, even if you don't do it the way it's generally done around here," Burnett said, his tone appreciative, his smirk broadening into quite a friendly and pleasing smile.

"I hardly know one end of a gun from the other," Hall confessed, feeling that his part in the affair had failed of the heroic in some way, in the eyes of Damascus, and Burnett in particular.

"You seemed to get hold of the wrong end of that one, all right," Burnett said.

A chuckle went around those on the porch, extending to others who stood inside the door.

"I'd like to know how old Bud Sandiver felt when he caught that gun between the eyes!" somebody speculated.

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 "It was the first time Bud ever had a gun throwed in his face that way," another declared with solemn emphasis, to the great entertainment of all.

Burnett stood by grinning. He reached into his trousers pocket with one chubby white hand, drew out something which he began pouring from palm to palm, abstractedly as a dealer shuffling chips at a gaming table between plays. What he poured from palm to palm in that detached way appeared to be small bits of glass, or even counterparts of the gems in his necktie and rings, if one could conceive such a possibility of careless wealth in a town so barren as Damascus.

Whatever it was, Burnett stood there pouring from hand to hand without even following the movement with a glance. He smiled as he shifted the bright fragments, winking at Hall as if to say they were two who understood each other, let the clowns have their laugh as they would.

"What was it all about?" Hall inquired.

"Oh, some of them Simrall fellers out tryin' to throw a little scare," Burnett replied, more annoyed than concerned over such a trivial business. "I guess they'll be holdin' you for the inquest."

"Inquest?" Hall repeated curiously, not getting the drift of it.

"Over Bud. If you're in a hurry—"

"Did somebody kill him?"

"Darn fool made a break to get away," Burnett replied, his annoyance growing into disgust.

"Oh," said Hall, fully enlightened.

He felt that his own poise and dignity had been unduly disturbed in the turmoil of that incident, as well as

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 Burnett's. More than that, it had thrown him uncomfortably before the public eye. Damascus was amused, rather than thrilled, by his effective interference in behalf of Major Bill Cottrell. In taking that gun by the handiest end that presented in that moment of necessity, he had broken the code of gentlemanly encounter.

It was a comical procedure, it seemed, to: smash a man between the eyes with a gun that was still in service. The regular, the neat and gentlemanly, thing to do was shoot in such a pinch. Knocking Bud Sandiver out with a loaded gun took all the tragedy, all the heroism, all the thrill out of the incident for Damascus. It was nothing but a joke.

Andrew Hall turned himself about without another word, went into the turnip-flavored dining-room and arranged himself at a table for the ministrations of the snuffling, frizzled, young woman who bore on and off, leaving Damascus to get as much fun out of the case as it might.

There was no other guest in the dining-room, although there were several unfinished suppers spread around, tablecloths pulled awry on some of the tables from which the feeders had jumped to rush away and get the news. The waiting lady appeared to be greatly agitated, bringing the guest his meal a dish at a time, with starts and shyings which slopped the soup over and emptied half the cup of melancholy coffee into the saucer. She gasped and exclaimed, keeping a wild eye on the door.

It was a miserable meal: water-logged potatoes in the skins, bread that would have sunk a seine, butter from the odorous packing-houses in Kansas City, ingenuously

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 termed bull butter in frontier places such as Damascus, roast beef that was gray leather in a thin, brown slop. The pie was a pale-crusted, watery wedge of something which curiosity alone could have tempted one to explore. Justice's bluster over people who slept in hotels and took their meals elsewhere was explained. It was about the only inducement he advanced that might bluff a timid man into eating at his board.

Justice came into the dining-room with a rush and a bang, shutting the door behind him as a man does when he reaches shelter out of a dust-driving wind. He hurried to Hall's table, such a solemn look in his face that it was almost a reproach.

"If you're a doctor, come out here and look after this man," Justice requested in a severe, commandeering way.

"What man?" Hall inquired. He looked up from a calculative study of the dough-covered pie, fork in hand, napkin across his thigh.

"Bill Cottrell, damn it! Who else do you suppose?"

"Oh, Bill Cottrell. Where is the eminent Doctor Ross?"

"Drunk, stinkin' blind drunk, laid out like a dead man over in the saloon. They've tried everything that's ever fetched him around: ducked him with ice water, drenched him with coffee in a beer bottle like you give medicine to a sick horse, stood him up and walked him, rolled him over a beer kaig, but they can't bring him to. If you're a doctor you'll have to come on and take the case."

Hall prodded the pie introspectively, not greatly moved by the town's gallant efforts to bring old Doc Ross out of his alcoholic trance.

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 "There must be another doctor around here somewhere," he said. "Send for him. I'm the railroad doctor; I didn't come here to practice in town."

"Ain't no other town in fifty-three mile of here but Simrall, and Doc Ross chased the feller away from there that tried to settle. He was a little homeopathical feller with whiskers in front of his years."

"If you'll stand for that kind of a doctor, then you ought to die. Is that old man still alive?"

"Yes, but he's bleedin' like a stuck hog. That bed of mine'll be ruined! I tell you, you've got to come on out there, Doc, and do something to stop that blood."

"Oh, well, if it's to save your bed, Mr. Justice, that's another thing."

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appeared to have been put in a high good humor by the shooting, perhaps because it moved recollections of his bushwacking days, when he rode on forays with the villainous Quantrell, scourge of the Kansas border. He assigned Dr. Hall a room adjoining the one in which Major Bill Cottrell lay, bringing up fresh coffee made from his private stock by his own notable hand. This refreshing drink he served the truly grateful physician on a precarious little table that he carried in for the purpose.

Dr. Hall had not left the wounded man's side for more than two hours. After doing all that surgical skill could accomplish to check the flow of blood that was doing so much damage to the hotel keeper's mattress and the body of Major Bill Cottrell at one time, Dr. Hall posted himself at the side of the bed, where he sat watching every breath of the perilously wounded, unconscious man. Now, as he sat drinking coffee in his own room, Dr. Hall could see the figure of Major Bill Cottrell through the connecting door, stretched as if ready for the grave.

"He's about gone, ain't he, Doc?" Justice inquired, tiptoeing away from the door.

"No, I wouldn't say he's about gone. He's near the edge, but there's life enough in him to hold him from going over for a while."

"Went slap through him, you said?"

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 Dr. Hall nodded, the cup near his lips.

"They used to say when I was in—in the—army, it was better to be shot clear through the lights that way. It makes a dreen, they say, when the bullet goes clean through."

Dr. Hall nodded again.

"It's an advantage, if there is any advantage in being shot."

"The other bullet grazed his head, furrered kim, you said, didn't you, Doc?" Dr. Hall nodded gravely. Where his patient was involved, he was as tight as a whisky-barrel, Jim thought.

Justice interpreted this reticence to gossip about the case in his own way as a display of egotism and airs. He might be all right for railroaders, Jim thought, but for all-around household doctoring, give him Old Doc Ross.

"I've seen 'em lay dazed that way when I was in the—war," Jim said. "Sometimes it made 'em foolish, never did outgrow it. You don't reckon that'll happen to Major Bill if he ever gits well?"

"Not at all."

"Can't tell whuther he'll pull through or not for four or five days, I guess, can you, Doc? Have to wait to see if fever and mortification sets in. It used to nearly always take 'em when they was shot that way in the army."

"I think he'll live," Dr. Hall said quietly.

"He's the daddy of this town," Jim explained. The main prop'd be gone out from under it if Major Bill was to die. Them Simrall fellers have been after him, they swore they'd git him, ever since the election went agin 'em and they lost the county seat. They said he put forty-two bogus ballots in the box and got 'em counted."

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 "Is it one of these county seat squabbles you've got on hand here?"

"It in't no squabble, Doc; it's a war."

"Is he alone? Hasn't he got any relatives?"

"Who? Major Bill? Yes, he's got relations, if you can call a wife a relation. Well, he's got a daughter, such as she is, and a son captain in the army. The old lady and 'Lisabeth they're down in Leavenworth now visitin' Captain Cottrell. I ain't never seen him, but I ain't got any use for them army men, 'specially them—"

"Has anybody notified them?"

"Yes, Judge Waters sent a telegram right off."

"They ought to be here to-morrow evening, then," Dr. Hall sighed, as if relieved of something that had worried him. "So they were after Major Bill, were they?"

"More than the rest of the town put together."

"Is he a real major, or a cattleman major?"

"He's a genu-wine brevet major, not one of them West Point manufactured ones. He got his title on the fightin' field time of the war. Wasn't on my side, but he's a ranks-up soldier, and a good one, I'm here to tell you."

"I'd like to know something about him, and this trouble you've got on your hands over the county seat," Dr. Hall proposed. He shifted to the edge of the bed, vacating the chair to his host.

"It won't hurt him, I guess, me buzzin' around in here? No, I didn't reckon it would. So you never heard of the war goin' on here between Simrall and Damascus over the county seat?"

"Not that I recall. There's been a good deal in the papers about county seat wars out in this part of the state the past four or five years."

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 "Yes, there's been a host of trouble over 'em. Major Bill Cottrell he's the daddy of this town, as I told you, and the daddy of this county, when it comes down to cases. He's been here patience knows how long, used to fight Indians all over here when they was buildin' the first railroad through Kansas. Him and Custer; he fought with Custer down in the Nation, cleanin' up the Pawnees. They say he was all shot to pieces in them Indian campaigns. You must 'a' run acrost some of them old scars, I guess?"

Dr. Hall nodded assent, his mouth buckled on further particulars of the major's scars.

"He settled down here after he quit the army, years before this county ever was organized, picked on it so he'd be off of the main road of people comin' and goin' and passin' through. Built him a big sod house, biggest ever put up here, six or seven rooms in it, they tell me—I never was in it. It was seventy miles to a railroad in them days, but that wasn't any more than a nice little lope to Major Bill. He shipped his pieanno and furniture out from Leavenworth, and settled down here with his wife and boy. That girl 'Lisabeth she was born afterwards, right here in the sod house they're livin' in to-day. She's a wild heifer, wild as hell."

"She must be an old-timer," Hall said, wondering what she could be like to fill Jim's notion of wildness in that extreme.

"Not more than twenty to twenty-five, I guess."

"Good looker?"

"Not accordin' to my tastes she ain't," Jim declared with emphasis. "Kind of a ginger-topped gal, straddlin' around on horseback all the time. She can jerk out a gun

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 and shoot quicker and better than any man on this range, knock a see-gar out of a man's mouth and never touch his mustache. Hell! She's done it, right here in this man's town!"

"Is that so?" Dr. Hall straightened up with a keen interest in this biography.

"Yes," Jim sighed, shaking his head over 'Lisabeth and her wild ways, "them old folks they've tried hard to make a lady of that girl, sendin' her down to Leavenworth to be educated and frilled up, but they've failed. The old man he's been hopin' to see her married off to some army officer, but she don't seem to go. Maybe they don't want a woman that handy with a gun around 'em. I know I wouldn't."

"It might make a difference to some people," Dr. Hall admitted, seeming to study over it as if it deserved the deepest consideration.

"You damn right it would! I don't want no see-gar shot out of my mouth just because a woman can't have something she wants."

"I should think not," Dr. Hall agreed. "The major went into the cattle business in those early days out here, I suppose?"

"Yes; he done well sellin' to the army. When they put this railroad through he organized the county, copied names off a hotel register down in Lawrence, I've heard, and put 'em on his petition, for this county didn't have sixty, much less six hundred inhabitants the law requires to organize a county, in them times. I don't care how he done it, he put it through. They put out bonds for a court house here in Damascus, and him and Judge Waters laid out this townsite on land the major owned.

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 They made fifty thousand apiece off of them lots, if they made a dollar. Boomed 'em clear down to Kansas City, sold lots by mail to people that never saw Damascus and never will."

"That was all square, wasn't it? just so they got the lots."

"Square enough, I reckon. If a man's fool enough to pay two hundred dollars for a lot away out here west of Dodge he ought to be skinned, I guess. Specalated on 'em, them buyers; sold 'em for less 'n half they paid, most of 'em. Well, some's holdin' 'em yit, payin' taxes, hopin' for a railroad boom."

"Will it come?"

"Not this fur west of Dodge. If I could sell this dump out for thirty-five hundred you'd see me streakin' for the east. I'd go back to Dodge and open me a grocery."

"But how did this county seat fuss begin?"

"I started to tell you, mister," Jim replied, somewhat huffed over the implication that he did not know how to relate the history of Damascus, and he a citizen of it since the tumble-weeds were raked up and burned off the square to make ready for the court house foundation.

"I beg your pardon, Mr. Justice. Please go ahead."

"A gang of specalators headed by a gambler by the name of Ora Simrall come out here from Dodge when they shut everything down there about four years ago and started 'em up a town about eight miles west of here. The railroad gradin' contractors had a big camp out there, the company had two or three boardin' trains full of jerries, four or five hundred men, all counted, I guess, in that camp in them days. It was purty good pickin' for Simrall when he opened a saloon and gamblin' joint.

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 He's runnin' a saloon over there now, but his game's shut up, I hear.

"Simrall he got the notion he'd have a private town of his own over there. He put in a big store and a hotel, got the company to build a depot and name the place after him, got a post office, and begun to spread it around he's goin' to build a big packin' house and git the railroad to put up shops, providin' the voters they'll vote to move the county seat over there. Simrall's collected a gang of men that was the very drugs of Dodge around him over there. They got up a petition two years ago to vote on movin' the county seat, and we voted on it. We beat 'em. They took it to court on the grounds we voted railroaders that didn't have no vote, but we beat 'em on that. The court down at Topeka handed down its decision in the case two or three weeks ago.

"Simrall got busy right away to have the question voted on agin at a special election. It's comin' off in June, goin' to cost us taxpayers a lot of money for no use on earth.

"Ever since Simrall and his gang has been tryin' to take the county seat away from us there's been hard feelin's between the two towns. There's been a good deal of fist-fightin' and shootin', two or three men's been shot up purty bad, but nobody ain't been killed till you laid Bud Sandiver out cold to-day."

"Why, man, I didn't kill him!" Hall protested, feeling a sweep of indefinable apprehension that seemed to lift his hair.

"It's all the same; you've got the credit for it," Jim assured him, comfortably, as if glad to be able to give praise and reward where they belonged.

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 "But I don't want the credit for it, Mr. Justice! Damn it all, man, I tell you I don't want the credit for it!"

Hall was sweating. In his excited denial of this honor, as Justice seemed to hold it, the railroad doctor got up, pushed the little table out of the way as if clearing a space to enforce his vehement word by physical demonstration.

"Well, I wouldn't git excited over it, as the Dutchman said when his wife swallered the dollar. I don't know, of my own knowledge and belief, who laid Bud out. I just heard the boys sayin' it was you."

"Burnett knows better—Burnett can tell you I didn't even know the man had been killed till he told me. He said Sandiver made a break to get away."

"It don't make no difference who done it, Bud's dead. He was a bad egg, it's a darn good thing for this county he's out of the way. But it's goin' to aggervate this trouble, it's goin' to bring them Simrall fellers over here like a swarm of hornets. Every man in this town'll have to hang a gun on him now, and be ready to hop up and fight."

"Did you want the scoundrel to kill that old man and get away?" Hall demanded hotly, challenging Jim's manner, which was half complaining, half doleful, as of a man who had been wronged and yet was too generous to come out with open censure.

"No, you done the right thing; you done the thing any man with a grain of sand'd 'a' done," Jim hastened to make it right. "I was aimin' to tell you how it's goin' to be from now on till we settle this question for good at the polls next June. It's goin' to be shootin' and killin' right and left, or I miss my guess, and I tell you right

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