bundle and to return without it. The ravine is pointed out. It opens on
the roadway about halfway between the Rains' store and the old home of
Coonrod.

But there is no myth to the present-day side of the story. More than
squirrels and rabbits have been hunted up that ravine.

But the legend of the hidden keg of gold is popular in many of the
valleys of the Appalachians, and it will even be found to have leaped
the valley of the Mississippi and almost identical in form appear and
appeal to the impressionable imaginations of those who live in the Ozark
Mountains to the west of that river.

There was but one thing in which Old Coonrod stood really in fear,
something not made or controlled by man. It was lightning. Whenever a
heavy thunder-storm broke over the mountains Coonrod, even in the last
years of his life when he had grown so fat, ran with all the speed he
could command for the cave above the spring, Here he would stay,
muttering and unapproachable, until the storm abated. Then he would come
from the cave swearing in that deep voice that carried both power and
terror, and, as the story goes, "for hours 'niggers' would be hopping
all over the valley."

Coonrod had a genuine admiration for the man or beast willing to fight
for his rights. Once finding one of his jacks eating his growing corn,
he put his dog upon him. The jack was old and small and shaggy. He
turned upon the dog sent after him and seizing the aggressor by the hair
at his back lifted him from the ground and maintaining his dignity
trotted out of the corn-field carrying the squirming dog. That jack was
pensioned. He was given his full supply of corn in winter and granted
the freedom of the meadows and the mountainsides in summer. Old Coonrod
would never sell him.

John M. Clemens, Mark Twain's father, lived in Jamestown when his
"dwelling constituted one-fifteenth of Obedstown." He and Coonrod Pile
were close friends, Pile helping elect Clemens to be the first Circuit
Court Clerk of Fentress county. Both were firm believers in the future
value of the timber, coal, iron and copper to be found in the mountains.
In the 30's both acquired all the acreage their resources would permit.

Mark Twain makes "Squire Si Hawkins" of "The Gilded Age,"

[Footnote: Copyright by Clara Gahrilowitsch and Susan Lee Warner.
Harper & Bros., Publishers, N. Y. Permission is also granted by the
Estate of Samuel L. Clemens and the Mark Twain Co.]

conceded to be d