and
Macfarlan, had settled at the gap--both lawyers and both of pioneer,
Indian-fighting blood. The report of the State geologist had been spread
broadcast. A famous magazine writer had come through on horseback and
had gone home and given a fervid account of the riches and the beauty of
the region. Helmeted Englishmen began to prowl prospectively around the
gap sixty miles to the southwest. New surveying parties were directing
lines for the rocky gateway between the iron ore and the coal. Engineers
and coal experts passed in and out. There were rumours of a furnace
and a steel plant when the railroad should reach the place. Capital had
flowed in from the East, and already a Pennsylvanian was starting a main
entry into a ten-foot vein of coal up through the gap and was coking
it. His report was that his own was better than the Connellsville coke,
which was the standard: it was higher in carbon and lower in ash. The
Ludlow brothers, from Eastern Virginia, had started a general store. Two
of the Berkley brothers had come over from Bluegrass Kentucky and their
family was coming in the spring. The bearded Senator up the valley, who
was also a preacher, had got his Methodist brethren interested--and the
community was further enriched by the coming of the Hon. Samuel Budd,
lawyer and budding statesman. As a recreation, the Hon. Sam was an
anthropologist: he knew the mountaineers from Virginia to Alabama and
they were his pet illustrations of his pet theories of the effect of
a mountain environment on human life and character. Hale took a great
fancy to him from the first moment he saw his smooth, ageless, kindly
face, surmounted by a huge pair of spectacles that were hooked behind
two large ears, above which his pale yellow hair, parted in the middle,
was drawn back with plaster-like precision. A mayor and a constable
had been appointed, and the Hon. Sam had just finished his first
case--Squire Morton and the Widow Crane, who ran a boarding-house, each
having laid claim to three pigs that obstructed traffic in the town. The
Hon. Sam was sitting by the stove, deep in thought, when Hale came
into the hotel and he lifted his great glaring lenses and waited for no
introduction:

"Brother," he said, "do you know twelve reliable witnesses come on
the stand and SWORE them pigs belonged to the squire's sow, and twelve
equally reliable witnesses SWORE them pigs belonged to the Widow Crane's
sow? I shorely was a heap perplexed."

"T