for
instance--she merely waves aside. If a man's been scarred with a knife,
he's apt to forget that others have not only been hurt but killed by
bullets. My God, dearest, she'll mean to be kind--but she'll put you on
the rack--she'll take you straight through the torture-chamber, in her
well-meant and cocksure certainty that she can choose for you better
than you can choose for yourself."

"I think, Boone," said Anne, with more than a little pride in the
rich softness of her voice, "you wouldn't hang back, because you had
to come to me through things like that. I'm not afraid of the
torture-chamber--it's just that I want to make it as easy for mother as
I can."

* * * * *

On the night before the first day of registration Boone was dining at
Colonel Wallifarro's house. Mrs. Masters found it difficult to maintain
a total concealment of her distrust of the mountain boy. In her own
heart she always thought of him as "that young upstart," but her worldly
wisdom safeguarded her against the mistaken attitude of open hostility
or even of too patronizing a tolerance. That course, she knew, had
driven many high-spirited daughters into open revolt. "Make a martyr of
him," she told herself with philosophically shrugged shoulders, "and you
can convert an ape into a hero."

So after dinner Boone and the girl sat uninterrupted in the fine old
drawing-room where the age-ripened Jouett portraits hung, while Morgan
and his father went over some papers in the Colonel's study on the
second floor.

"Boone," demanded the girl, "what is all this talk about camera squads
and inspection parties? I'm afraid Uncle Tom--and you, too--are going to
be running greater risks tomorrow than you admit."

He had risen to say good night, but it is not on record that lovers
resent delays in their leave-takings.

"At the registration every qualified voter must be enrolled," he told
her. "The camera squads have been formed to make rounds of the precincts
and take certain pictures."

"Why?"

"Because we have fairly reliable information that the town will be
overrun with flying squadrons of imported repeaters--and that the police
who should lock them up mean to protect them."

"What are repeaters?" she naively inquired, and he enlightened her out
of the treasury of his newly acquired wisdom.

"We believe that hundreds of floating and disreputable fellows have been
brought in from other towns and will be registered