--you mark my words," say the country
folk. And the drummers, cattle-buyers, and others who pass this way from
southwestern Virginia tell us, "Everybody up our way sympathizes with
the Allens."

In some measure this morbid sentiment is due to the spectacular features
of the Hillsville tragedy. If there be one human quality that the
mountaineer admires above all others, it is "nerve." And what greater
display of nerve has been made in this generation than for a few
clansmen to shoot down a judge at the bench, the public prosecutor, the
sheriff, the clerk of the court, and two jurymen, then take to the
mountain laurel like Corsicans to the _maquis_, and defy the armed
power of the country? The cause does not matter, to a mountaineer. Our
Highlanders are anything but robbers, for instance, and yet the only
outsider who has ballads sung in his memory throughout Appalachia is
Jesse James!--unless Jack Donohue was one--I do not know.--

Come all ye bold undaunted men
And outlaws of the day,
Who'd rather wear the ball and chain
Than work in slavery!

* * * *

Said Donohue to his comrades,
"If you'll prove true to me,
This day I'll fight with all my might,
I'll fight for liberty;
Be of good courage, be bold and strong,
Be galliant and be true;
This day I'll fight with all my might,"
Says bold Jack Donohue.

* * * *

Six policemen he shot down
Before the fatal ball
Pierced the heart of Donohue
And 'casioned him to fall;
And then he closed his struggling eyes,
And bid this world adieu.
Come all ye boys that fear no noise,
And pray for Donohue!

No doubt the mountain minstrels are already composing ballads in honor
of the Allens; for it is a fact we cannot blink at that the outlaw is
the popular hero of Appalachia to-day, as Rob Roy and Robin Hood were in
the Britain of long ago. This is not due to any ingrained hostility to
law and order as such, but simply to admiration for any men who fight
desperately against overwhelming odds. There is a glamour about bold and
lawless adventure that fascinates mature men and women who have never
outgrown youthful habits of mind. Whoever has the reputation of being a
dangerous man to cross--the "marked" man, who carries his life upon his
sleeve, but bears himself as a smiling cavalier--he is the only true
aristocrat among a valorous but primitive people.

But this is o