re_ demand."

Something in the tone made Uncle Israel turn sharply. "Does ye mean fer
mournin'?" he demanded, and the reply was enigmatical.

"Mebby so--but fer another kind of mournin' then what ye hev in mind, I
reckon. These hills has a plenty ter mourn about. I reckon ye'll heer
tell of this black cloth again."

* * * * *

It was a night when cabin doors were tight-barred and when families
huddled indoors, drawing close to the fires that roasted their faces
while their backs were cold from wind hissing through the chinks in
wall and puncheon flooring.

Even the drag net of Kinnard Towers' search lay idle to-night in the
icy grip of the storm.

Through the wildness of shrieking winds, lashing the tree-tops, some
men said that they heard ghostly incantations like the chant of a great
company of restless spirits.

Jim Towers, who had been knocked sprawling into his own bonfire before
the eyes of his myrmidons, was feeling somewhat appeased in spirit
to-night. He dwelt in a two-story house so weatherproof that, for him,
the tempest remained an external matter. To-night he had with him some
half-dozen friends who had come for counsel earlier in the day and whom
the storm had interned there for the night. They were all men who had
been with him on the expedition that had gone awry when George Kelly
had deserted. Now, as then, the company was defeating tedium with
wassail. The drab woman who was Jim's wife, and his slave, had fed them
all to repletion with "side-meat" and corn pone and gravy, and had
withdrawn to a chair apart, where she sat forgotten.

They had been cursing Bear Cat Stacy and George Kelly until their
invectives had been exhausted and the liquor had warmed them into a
cheerier mood in which they planned spectacular and complete reprisal.

"Es fer Kelly, I reckon he's got his belly full an' bustin' already,"
boasted Jim Towers with an unpleasant chuckle. "Charlie Reverdy, hyar,
an' me hes seen ter thet right fully. In ther place whar his
dwellin'-house stood thar hain't nothin' left but jest a pile of ashes.
He dastn't show his face in ther open--an' in due time Kinnard aims ter
fo'close on ther ground hitself."

"George Kelly hain't ther only man thet's aidin' an' abettin' him,
though," demurred a saturnine guest, whose hair grew down close to his
eyebrows. "No man knows how many low-down sons of hussies he's got with
him."

Jim Towers laughed and pour