a rifle-shot from
some ambush picked in advance.

The assassin is not conscious of any cowardice in such act. If the
trouble between him and his foe had been strictly a personal matter, to
be settled forever by one man's fall, then he might have welcomed a
duel with all the punctilios. But his blood is not his alone--it belongs
to his clan. Whenever a Corsican is slain his family takes up the feud.
A vendetta ensues--a war of extermination by clan against clan.

Now, the chief object of war, as all strategists agree, is to inflict
the greatest loss upon the enemy with the least loss to one's own side.
Hence we have hostilities without declaration of war; we have the
ambush, the night attack, masked batteries, mines and submarines. Thus
we murder hundreds asleep or unshriven. This is war.

Moreover, while a soldier must be brave in any extremity, it is no less
his duty to save himself unharmed as long as he can, so that he may help
his own side and kill more and more of the enemy. Therefore it is proper
and military for him to "snipe" his foes by deliberate sharpshooting
from behind any lurking-place that he can find. This is war.

And the vendetta, says our Corsican, is nothing else than war.

When Matteo has been slain by an enemy, his friends carry his body home
and swear vengeance over the corpse, while his wife soaks her
handkerchief in his wounds to keep as a token whereby she will incite
her children, as they grow up, to war against all kinsmen of their
father's murderer.

Then a son or brother of Matteo slips forth into the night, full-armed
to slay like a dog any member of the rival faction whom he may find at a
disadvantage. The deed done, he flies to the _maquis_, the mountain
thicket, and there he will hide, dodging the gendarmes, fighting off his
enemies--an outlaw with a price upon his head, but pitied or admired by
all Corsicans outside the feud, and succored by his clan.

It is a far cry from the Mediterranean to our own Appalachia: so why
this prelude? Our mountaineers never heard of Corsica. Not a drop of
South European blood flows in their veins. Few of them ever heard one
word of a foreign tongue. True. And yet we shall mark some strange
analogies between Corsican vendettas and Appalachian feuds, Corsican
clannishness and Appalachian clannishness, Corsican women and our
mountain women--before this chapter ends.

Long, long ago, in the mountains of eastern Kentucky, Dr. Abner Baker
married a M