in heartiest enjoyment.

The man recovered, but that was no palliation of the offense to the
mind of a hot-eyed young man from the East, who was besieging the county
authorities for redress and writing brimstone and saltpetre for
his paper. The powers of the county proving either lackadaisical or
timorous, he appealed to those of the State, and he went every night to
sleep at a farmhouse, the owner of which had received a warning from
the "White-Caps." And one night it befell that he was rewarded, for the
raiders attempted an entrance. He and the farmer and the former's
sons beat off the marauders and did a satisfactory amount of damage in
return. Two of the "White-Caps" they captured and bound, and others they
recognized. Then the State authorities hearkened to the voice of the
"Herald" and its owner; there were arrests, and in the course of time
there was a trial. Every prisoner proved an alibi, could have proved a
dozen; but the editor of the "Herald," after virtually conducting the
prosecution, went upon the stand and swore to man after man. Eight men
went to the penitentiary on his evidence, five of them for twenty years.
The Plattville Brass Band serenaded the editor of the "Herald" again.

There were no more raids, and the Six-Cross-Roads men who were left kept
to their hovels, appalled and shaken, but, as time went by and left them
unmolested, they recovered a measure of their hardiness and began to
think on what they should do to the man who had brought misfortune
and terror upon them. For a long time he had been publishing their
threatening letters and warnings in a column which he headed: "Humor of
the Day."

"Harkless don't understand the Cross-Roads," Briscoe said to Miss
Sherwood as they left the Wimby farm behind; "and then he's like most
of us; hardly any of us realizes that harm's ever going to come to _us_.
Harkless was anxious enough about other people, but----"

The young lady interrupted him, touching his arm. "Look!" she said,
"Didn't you see a child, a little girl, ahead of us on the road?"

"I noticed one a minute ago, but she's not there now," answered Briscoe.

"There was a child walking along the road just ahead, but she turned and
saw us coming, and she disappeared in the most curious way; she seemed
to melt into the weeds at the roadside, across from the elder-bush
yonder."

The judge pulled in the horses by the elder-bush. "No child here, now,"
he said, "but you're right; there certa