ce and figure might have been cast in bronze as a type
of the American pioneer, "yet ye censures me fer makin' untaxed
licker!" His voice trembled with a repressed thunder of emotion.

"I've seed times right hyar on this creek when fer ther most part of a
whole winter we hurted fer salt an' thar warn't none to be had fer love
nor money. Thar warn't no money in these hills nohow--an' damn'-little
love ter brag about. Yore maw an' me an' Poverty dwelt hyar
tergether--ther three of us. We've got timber an' coal an' no way ter
git hit ter market. Thar's jest only one thing we kin turn inter money
or store-credit--an' thet's our corn run inter white licker."

He paused as if awaiting a reply and when his son volunteered none he
swept on to his peroration. "When I makes hit now I takes numerous
chances, an' don't complain. Some revenuer, a-settin' on his hunkers,
takin' life easy an' a-waitin' fer a fist full of blood money is liable
ter meet up in ther highway with some feller thet's nursin' of a grudge
erginst me or you. Hit's plumb risky an' hits damn'-hard work, but hit
hain't no wrong-doin' an' ef yore grandsires an' yore father hain't
been above hit, I rekon _you_ hain't above hit neither."

Turner Stacy was still standing on the porch, with one finger marking
the place where he had left off reading his biography of Lincoln--the
master of men.

Born of a line of stoics, heir to laconic speech and reared to stifle
emotions, he was inarticulate and the somberness of his eyes, which
masked a pageantry of dreams and a surging conflict in his breast,
seemed only the surliness of rebellion.

He looked at his father and his mother, withered to sereness by their
unrelenting battle with a life that had all been frostbite until even
their power of resentment for its injustice had guttered out and dried
into a dull acceptance.

His fingers gripped the book. Abraham Lincoln had, like himself,
started life in a log house and among crude people. Probably he, too,
had in those early days no one who could give an understanding ear to
the whispering voices that urged him upward. At first the urge itself
must have been blurred of detail and shadowy of object.

Turner's lips parted under an impulse of explanation, and closed again
into a more hopelessly sullen line. The older man had chafed too long
in heavy harness to comprehend a new vision. Any attempt at
self-expression would be futile.

So the picture he made was only that o