p the
slope of the mountain. Its solidity was that of mortised logs and its
windows were protected behind solid shutters. Inside there was plainly
an abundance of space, as befitted the dwelling-place of the district's
overlord. A clump of white-armed sycamores partly masked its front, but
through the naked branches one could see that for a hundred yards about
it, in every direction, lay unbroken clearing, and that for all its
civilian seeming it might, if need arose, stand siege against anything
less formidable than gatling guns.

Stamping the cold and cramp from our feet, we settled our score with the
liveryman, and turned into the store.

CHAPTER XVIII

A CHAT WITH A DICTATOR.

Inside Judge Garvin's store we came upon a group of slovenly loungers.
Had my mind been free enough of its own troubling thoughts to spare a
remnant of interest, I should have found this new and strange scheme of
things engrossing. I was in a scrap of America which the onrushing tide
of world advancement had left stranded and forgotten. Here a people of
unmixed British stock lived primitive lives, fought feudal wars, and
shrined every virtue high except regard for human life.

These four narrow walls in part epitomised that life. The shelves back
of the counters displayed what things they held essentials: rough
crockery, coarse calicoes, canned goods, barrels of brown sugar,
brogans, stick candy and ammunition.

About a small stove loafed some eight or ten men and several
"hound-dogs." The shoulders of these men slouched; their hands were
chapped and coarse; their clothes muddied, but when they walked it was
with something of the catamount's softness, and their eyes were alert.

Behind the counter stood a man of fifty. I knew, without waiting for
Weighborne's greeting, that this must be Garvin. There was something
pronounced yet hard to define which gave him the outstanding prominence
of a master among minions.

He was a large man and inclined to stoutness. His hair and moustache
were sandy and his florid face was marked with a purplish tracery of
veins in which the blood appeared to bank and stand currentless. His
neck was grossly heavy and bovine, but his forehead was broad and his
eyes disarmingly frank and blue. His mouth, too, fell into the kindly
lines of a perpetual smile.

His clothing was rough and his neck collarless, but one forgot this and
noted only the suavity of his bearing and the ingratiating quality of
his