ng preparations for a comfortable living, the eyes of the
surrounding community were cast upon him. Slowly and untiringly he
labored for a few weeks, getting everything in comfortable condition,
seeking the assistance of the few loafing farmers, until matters were
fairly arranged and everything fixed up comfortably for bachelor
quarters.

If one should have been standing on the hill at a time very near sunset
one afternoon, he could have seen Jack Wade, the graduate engineer,
standing at the bars or gate leading from his horse-lot to a plot of
ground used as a pasture for his one cow and one horse. He no longer has
the appearance of a soft-skinned school-boy, but rather is dark and
ruddy, the warm Kentucky sun having changed his complexion. He has on a
blue shirt, soft, with collar attached, high-top boots, into the legs
of which his corduroy pantaloons are stuffed, in the style of a true
Westerner. He has one foot resting upon the lower wire while his arms
fell loosely across the top wire. He is surveying with his keen dark eye
the surrounding country, not having had time heretofore to look about
him.

Over yonder, about one mile to the south of him, is a farmhouse; over to
his right, and a little to the northwest, is another cabin. Behind him
looms up the huge mountain, amid whose rugged rocks and green shrubbery
much of his time will be spent. He turns and looks toward the mountain;
there he sees another cabin, or small house. It is the home of a tobacco
planter, who has one son and an only daughter.

Nora Judson has many times looked longingly down the dusty road toward
the cabin of the newcomer and wondered what he was like. Her scheming
brain found a way by which she could tell.

Twilight's shadows are drawing the day to a close. Down the cow-trodden
road can be seen an old brindle cow, coming leisurely, switching her
tail from one side to the other, nibbling the sweet tufts of grass along
the side of the trail. On she comes, until she passes the watcher and
goes out into the woodland just beyond.

Wade watched the cow until she was out of sight, then he sighed.

"It's going to be a fearful job," he said mentally, "but the thing
_shall_ be done. Not one of them shall be left if God spares me long
enough to take them away."

As the last words left his mind he glanced heavenward, as if to implore
the Almighty to aid him in a work which he honestly thought was for the
good of humanity at large and for God Him