in' ter kill ye ... this matter lays betwixt me an' you ... an'
nobody else hain't agoin' ter be brung inter hit.... Does ye onderstand
thet full clear?"

"Thet's agreed," he gave answer, but his voice trembled with passion,
"an' I've done told _you_ what I wants ye ter know. I loves ye an' I'm
goin' ter hev ye. I don't keer no master amount how hit comes ter pass,
but sooner or later I gits me what I goes atter--an' from now on I'm
goin' atter _you_."

He turned and walked insolently away and the girl, with the strain of
necessity removed, sank back weakly against the cool solidity of the
walnut trunk. Except for its support she would have fallen, and after
awhile, hearing Elviry's voice singing off at the back of the house and
realizing that she was not watched, she turned weakly and spread her
outstretched hands upward in embrace against the rough wood, as a
frightened child might throw its arms about a protecting mother.

When Sam Opdyke had been taken from the courtroom to the "jail-house"
that his wrath might cool into submissiveness, and when later he had
been held to the grand jury, he knew in his heart that ahead of him lay
the prospect of leaving the mountains. The hated lowlands meant to him
the penitentiary at Frankfort, and with Jim Rowlett and Parish Thornton
united against him, this was his sure prospect.

The two men who had shared with him the sensational notability of that
entrance and the deflated drama of that exit had gone home rankling
under a chagrin not wholly concerned with the interests of the
defendant.

Enmities were planted that day that carried the infection of bitterness
toward Harpers and Doanes alike, and the resentful minority began taking
thought of new organization; a thought secretly fanned and inflamed by
emissaries of the resourceful Bas Rowlett.

Back in the days following on the War of Secession the word Ku Klux had
carried a meaning of both terror and authority. It had functioned in the
mountains as well as elsewhere through the South, but it had been, in
its beginnings, a secret body of regulators filling a void left by the
law's failure, and one boasting some colour of legitimacy.

Since then occasional organizations of imitative origin had risen for a
time and fallen rapidly into decay, but these were all gangs of
predatory activity and outrage.

Now once more in the talk of wayside store and highroad meeting one
began to hear that name "Ku Klux" though it came vague