er arrivals stamped their feet against the cold of the
frost-stiffened mud, and rammed chapped hands into trouser pockets.

They talked little, but waited with an enduring patience. They were
determined men, raggedly clothed and bearded; incurious of gaze and
uncommunicative of speech--but armed and purposeful. They were men who
had left their beds to respond to the call of their clan.

Slowly Bear Cat circulated among the motley crowd, exchanging
greetings, but holding his counsel until the tide of arrivals should
end. It was a tatterdemalion array that he had conjured into conclave
with his skittering whoop along the hill-tops. There were lads in jeans
and veterans in long-tailed coats, green of seam and fringed of cuff.
They carried rifles of all descriptions from modern repeaters to
antiquated squirrel guns, but, in the bond of unshrinking stalwartness,
they were uniform.

To hold such a headstrong army--mightily leaning toward violence--in
leash needed a firm hand, and an unbending will. Old fires were
kindling in them, ignited by the cry that had been a match set to
tinder and gunpowder.

It was, all in all, a parlous time, but no one caught any riffle of
doubt in Turner Stacy's self-confident authority as he passed from
group to group, explaining the vital need of forbearant control until
Kinnard Towers had come, spoken and departed. The Stacy honor was at
stake and must be upheld. His morning hurricane of passion had left him
alertly cool and self-possessed--but there was battle-light in his
eyes.

In grim expectancy they waited, while nerves tightened under the heavy
burden of suspense. Turner had sternly commanded cold sobriety, and the
elders had sought to enforce it, but here and there in hidden places
the more light-headed passed flasks from hand to hand and from mouth to
mouth.

Such was the crowd into which Kinnard Towers eventually rode, with his
double body-guard, and even his tough-fibred spirit must have
acknowledged an inward qualm of trepidation, though he nodded with a
suave ease of bearing as he swung himself from his saddle at the gate.

The urbane blue eyes under the straw-yellow brows were not unseeing,
nor were they lacking in a just power of estimate. They noted the
thunder-cloud quiet--and did not like it, but, after all, they had not
expected to like it.

As Bear Cat came forward the Towers chieftain began unctuously. "How
air Mr. Henderson? Air he still alive?"

"He war last ti