When the senate convened that day, strange and uncouth lookers-on stood
ranged about the state house corridors, and their unblinking eyes took
account of their chief adversary as he entered.

Upon his dark face, with its overhanging forelock, flickered no ghost of
misgiving; no hint of any weakening or excitement. His gaze betrayed no
interest beyond the casual for the men along the walls, whom report
credited with a murderous hatred of himself.

* * * * *

Boone was fretting his heart out at the cabin of Saul Fulton while he
knew that history was in the making at Frankfort, and on the evening of
the twenty-ninth an eagerness to be near the focus of activity mastered
him. The elements of right and wrong involved in this battle of
political giants were, to his untrained mind, academic, but the drama of
conflict was like a bugle-call--clear, direct and urgent.

He would not be immediately needed on the farm, and Frankfort was only
fifteen miles away. If he set out at once and walked most of the night,
he could reach the Mecca of his pilgrimage by tomorrow morning, and in
his pocket was the sum of "two-bits" to defray the expenses of "snacks
an' sich-like needcessities." For the avoidance of possible discussion,
he slipped quietly out of the back door with no announcement to Saul's
wife. With soft snowflakes drifting into his face and melting on his
eyelashes, he began his march, and for four hours swung along at a
steady three-and-a-half mile gait. At last he stole into a barn and
huddled down upon a straw pile, but before dawn he was on the way again,
and in the early light he turned into the main street of the state
capital. His purpose was to view one day of life in a city and then to
slip back to his uneventful duties.

* * * * *

The town had outgrown its first indignant surprise over the invasion of
the "mountain army," and the senator from Kenton had passed boldly
through its unordered ranks, as need suggested. The hill men had fallen
sullenly back and made a path for his going.

This morning he walked with a close friend, who had constituted himself
a bodyguard of one. The upper house was to meet at ten, and it was five
minutes short of the hour when the man, with preoccupied and resolute
features, swung through the gate of the state house grounds. The way lay
from there around the fountain to the door set within the columned
portico.

In c