a feller thet war full of white licker--an'
they're takin' him ter ther jail-house now. I reckon yore doctrine
hain't hardly converted nobody hyarabouts--but we don't aim ter insult
no visitor."

* * * * *

Victor McCalloway had come to Cyrus Spradling's house to remain until he
could arrange a more permanent residence. The purpose that lay behind
his coming was one which he had not felt called upon to explain, and
though he had much to learn of this new place of abode, still he had
come forearmed with some of the cardinals of a necessary understanding.

They were an incurious people with whom he had cast his lot, content
with their remoteness, and it was something that here a man could lose
himself from questions touching the past, so long as he answered frankly
those of the present. It suited McCalloway to seal the back pages and
the bearded men evinced no wish to penetrate them.

Before the snow flew the newcomer was to be housed under his own
roof-tree, and today in answer to the verbal announcement that he was to
have a "working" on the land he had bought, the community was present,
armed with hammer and saw, with adze and plane, mobilized under the
auspices of Cyrus Spradling who moved, like a shaggy patron saint, among
them.

There were men, working shoulder to shoulder, whose enmities were deep
and ancient, but who today were restrained by the common spirit of
volunteer service to a neighbour. Cyrus had seen to it that the
gathering at McCalloway's "house-raising" should not bear the
prejudicial colour of partisanship, but that Carrs and Gregories alike
should have a hand in the activities which were going robustly forward
at the head of Snag Ridge.

Back of Cedar Mountain no architect was available and no builders' union
afforded or withheld labour, but every man was carpenter and artisan in
his own right, and some were "practiced corner-men" as well.

Through the sun-flooded day with its Indian summer dream along the
skyline their axes rang in accompaniment to their homely jests, and the
earnest whine of their saws went up with the minors of voices raised in
the plaintive strains of folk-lore ballads.

The only wage accepted was food and drink. They would have thought as
readily of asking payment for participation in the rough festivities of
the "infare" with which the mountain groom brings his bride from her
wedding to his own house on a pillion at the back of his saddl