stony brooks in
diagonals, and often in the darkness of the mountain forest I had to feel
for the blazes on the trees. There was no making time. I gained the
notch with the small hours of the morning, started on with the descent,
crisscrossing, following a stream here and a stream there, until at
length the song of the higher waters ceased and I knew that I was in the
valley. Suddenly there was no crown-cover over my head. I had gained
the road once more, and I followed it hopefully, avoiding the stumps and
the deep wagon ruts where the ground was spongy.

The morning light revealed a milky mist through which the trees showed
like phantoms. Then there came stains upon the mist of royal purple, of
scarlet, of yellow like a mandarin's robe, peeps of deep blue fading into
azure as the mist lifted. The fiery eye of the sun was cocked over the
crest, and beyond me I saw a house with its logs all golden brown in the
level rays, the withered cornstalks orange among the blackened stumps.
My horse stopped of his own will at the edge of the clearing. A cock
crew, a lean hound prostrate on the porch of the house rose to his
haunches, sniffed, growled, leaped down, and ran to the road and sniffed
again. I listened, startled, and made sure of the distant ring of many
hoofs. And yet I stayed there, irresolute. Could it be Tipton and his
men riding from Jonesboro to capture Sevier? The hoof-beats grew
louder, and then the hound in the road gave tongue to the short, sharp
bark that is the call to arms. Other dogs, hitherto unseen, took up the
cry, and turning in my saddle I saw a body of men riding hard at me
through the alley in the forest. At their head, on a heavy,
strong-legged horse, was one who might have stood for the figure of
turbulence, and I made no doubt that this was Colonel Tipton
himself,--Colonel Tipton, once secessionist, now champion of the Old
North State and arch-enemy of John Sevier. At sight of me he reined up
so violently that his horse went back on his haunches, and the men behind
were near overriding him.

"Look out, boys," he shouted, with a fierce oath, "they've got guards
out!" He flung back one hand to his holster for a pistol, while the
other reached for the powder flask at his belt. He primed the pan, and,
seeing me immovable, set his horse forward at an amble, his pistol at the
cock.

"Who in hell are you?" he cried.

"A traveller from Virginia," I answered.

"And what are you doing here?" he dema