was quite right. She had seen the matter the night before just
as it was. For just at that hour young Dave, sobered, but still on the
verge of tears from anger and humiliation, was telling the story of the
day in her father's cabin. The old man's brows drew together and his
eyes grew fierce and sullen, both at the insult to a Tolliver and at the
thought of a certain moonshine still up a ravine not far away and the
indirect danger to it in any finicky growth of law and order. Still he
had a keen sense of justice, and he knew that Dave had not told all the
story, and from him Dave, to his wonder, got scant comfort--for another
reason as well: with a deal pending for the sale of his lands, the
shrewd old man would not risk giving offence to Hale--not until that
matter was settled, anyway. And so June was safer from interference
just then than she knew. But Dave carried the story far and wide, and
it spread as a story can only in the hills. So that the two people most
talked about among the Tollivers and, through Loretta, among the Falins
as well, were June and Hale, and at the Gap similar talk would come.
Already Hale's name was on every tongue in the town, and there, because
of his recent purchases of town-site land, he was already, aside from
his personal influence, a man of mysterious power.

Meanwhile, the prescient shadow of the coming "boom" had stolen over the
hills and the work of the Guard had grown rapidly.

Every Saturday there had been local lawlessness to deal with. The spirit
of personal liberty that characterized the spot was traditional. Here
for half a century the people of Wise County and of Lee, whose border
was but a few miles down the river, came to get their wool carded, their
grist ground and farming utensils mended. Here, too, elections were held
viva voce under the beeches, at the foot of the wooded spur now known
as Imboden Hill. Here were the muster-days of wartime. Here on Saturdays
the people had come together during half a century for sport and
horse-trading and to talk politics. Here they drank apple-jack and
hard cider, chaffed and quarrelled and fought fist and skull. Here the
bullies of the two counties would come together to decide who was the
"best man." Here was naturally engendered the hostility between the
hill-dwellers of Wise and the valley people of Lee, and here was fought
a famous battle between a famous bully of Wise and a famous bully of
Lee. On election days the country peopl