the train
at four o'clock that morning for Louisville.

For a moment black rage possessed him, then it cleared away into a more
philosophical mood as his informant added, "But he 'lowed ter several
folks thet he aimed ter come back ergin in about a week's time."

* * * * *

On that trip to Louisville Jerry Henderson saw to it that old Lone
Stacy should face trial with every advantage of learned and
distinguished counsel.

Jerry and President Williams of the C. and S.-E. Railways knew, though
the public did not, that the expenses of that defense were to be
charged up to the road's accounts under the head of "Incidentals--_in
re_ Cedar Mountain extension."

Old Lone had been an unconscious sponsor during these months and his
friendship warranted recognition, not only for what he had done, but
also for what he might yet do.

But the promoter's stay in the city was not happy since he found
himself floundering in a quandary of mind and heart which he could no
longer laugh away. He had heretofore boasted an adequate strength to
regulate and discipline his life. Such a power he had always regarded
as test and measure of an ambitious man's effectiveness. Its failure,
total or partial, was a flaw which endangered the metal and temper of
resolution.

On these keen and bracing days, as he walked briskly along the streets
of the city, he found himself instinctively searching for a face not to
be found; the face of Blossom Fulkerson and always upon realization
followed a pang of disappointment. Unless he watched himself he would
be idiotically falling in love with her, he mused, which was only a
vain denial that he was already in love with her.

It was in their half-conscious pervasiveness, their dream-like
subtlety, that these influences were strongest. When they emerged into
the full light of consciousness he laughed them away. Such fantasies
did not fit into his pattern of life. They were suicidally dangerous.
Yet they lingered in the fairy land of the partially realized.

He wished that her ancestors had been among those who had won through
to the promised land of the bluegrass, instead of those who had been
stranded in the dry-rot of the hills. In that event, perhaps, her
grandmothers would have been ladies in brocade and powdered hair
instead of bent crones dipping snuff by cabin hearth-stones. All their
inherent fineness of mind and charm, Blossom had--under the submerging