ght from the forests the sharp
frost-cracking of the beeches like the pop of small guns, and in wayside
stores the backwoods merchants leaned over their counters and shook
dismal heads, when housewives plodded in over long and slavish trails to
buy salt and lard, and went home again with their sacks empty.

Those who did not "have things hung up" felt the pinch of actual
suffering, and faces in ill-lighted and more illy ventilated cabins
became morose and pessimistic.

Such human soil was fallow for the agitator, and the doctrine which the
winter did not halt from travelling was that incitement preached by the
"riders."

Every wolf pack that runs on its food-trail is made up of strong-fanged
and tireless-thewed beasts, but at its head runs a leader who has
neither been balloted upon nor born to his place. He has taken it and
holds it against encroachment by title of a strength and boldness above
that of any other. He loses it if a superior arises. The men who are of
the vendetta acknowledge only the chieftainship which has risen and
stands by that same gauge and proving.

Parish Thornton, the recent stranger, had come to such a position. He
had not sought it, but neither, when he realized the conditions, had he
evaded it. Now he had made a name of marvellous prowess, which local
minstrels wove into their "ballets." He was accounted to be possessed of
an almost supernatural courage and invulnerability; of a physical
strength and quickness that partook of magic. Men pointed to his record
as to that of a sort of superman, and they embellished fact with fable.

He had been the unchallenged leader of the Harpers since that interview
with old Aaron Capper, and the ally of Jim Rowlett since his bold ride
to Hump Doane's cabin, but now it was plain that this leadership was
merging rapidly into one embracing both clans.

Old Jim had not long to live, and since the peace had been
reestablished, the Doanes no less than the Harpers began to look to, and
to claim as their own, this young man whose personal appeal had laid
hold upon their imaginations.

But that is stating one side of the situation that the winter saw
solidifying into permanence. There was another.

Every jealousy stirred by this new regime, every element that found
itself galled by the rearrangement, was driven to that other influence
which had sprung up in the community--and it was an influence which was
growing like a young Goliath.

So far that growth