er's strained and meager
bounty. Several of them slept on pallets in a loft gained by a ladder,
and others dwelt in near-by cabins. The room turned over to us served as
guest chamber and parlor, and here alone in the house was there any hint
of concession to appearances. Through the cracks of its uncarpeted floor
chilly gusts of wind swept upward, and sent us hovering quail-like as
close as possible to the stone hearth of the broad chimney place. A huge
four-post bed in one corner was decorated with stiff pillows upon which
purple paper showed through coverings of coarse lace; patches of
newspaper stopped the widest wall cracks. A cheap cottage organ stood at
one side and rush-bottomed chairs completed the furnishings. A small
cuddy-hole housed the attorney and his wife. His mother, an ancient
crone-like woman of withered, leathery face, and all her brood of
grandchildren slept in two beds in the large, murky room which also
accommodated dining table, cook stove and pantry accessories.

One saw a profusion of firearms, and unlike the make-shift of less
important things these were modern and effective. Before lamp-lighting
came the barring of heavy shutters, and as time passed we grew
accustomed to other evidences of that caution which was daily routine
with these people living in a practical state of siege. We were fed, in
relays, by the flickering light of a coal-oil lamp. The women declined
to partake of food until we were through, and busied themselves
incessantly between stove and table. As we withdrew to the draughty room
which was ours for sleeping, but common ground until bedtime, the
retainers shuffled into the places about the table which we had just
vacated, for supper, eating, as suited henchmen, after their betters.

We were not a merry party as we huddled in a semi-circle around the
hearth where the blaze burned our faces while the gusty air chilled our
backs. Weighborne and Marcus argued over an opened copy of Kentucky
Reports. The old woman, with a face shriveled like that of an aged
monkey, crouched in her chair and sucked with toothless gums at a clay
pipe.

When an hour had thawed the shyness of the mountain folk into general
conversation and I had been forced to tell many traveler's tales, Marcus
arose and with a rough tenderness wrapped a shawl around the shivering
shoulders of the old woman.

"My mother," he said with no note of apology, "has never been to
Louisville or traveled on a railroad tr