armies, but
often neighbor against neighbor, and sometimes the cloak of North or
South would be used as a disguise for the basest of motives.

They also found two sanguinary trails leading to the wood in which the
mountaineers had hitched their horses, indicating that the defenders of
the Kenton house had shot well. But by the next morning Skelly's men
had made good their flight far into the hills where no one could follow
them. They sent no request for their own dead who were buried by the
Pendleton people.

But the town raised a home guard to defend itself against raiders of any
kind, and Colonel Kenton and Harry promptly made ready for their journey
to Frankfort, where the choice of the state must soon be made, and
whither Raymond Bertrand, the South Carolinian, had gone already.
Colonel Kenton feared no charge because of the fight with Skelly's men.
He was but defending his own home and here, as in the motherland,
a man's house was his castle.

CHAPTER VIII

THE FIGHT FOR A STATE

Colonel Kenton and Harry avoided Louisville, which was now in the hands
of Northern sympathizers, and, travelling partly by rail and partly by
stage, reached Frankfort early in May to attend the special session of
the Legislature called by Governor Magoffin. Although the skirmishing
had taken place already along the edge of highland and lowland, the
state still sought to maintain its position of neutrality. There was
war within its borders, and yet no war. In feeling, it was Southern,
and yet its judgment was with the Union. Thousands of ardent young men
had drifted southward to join the armies forming there, and thousands of
others, equally ardent, had turned northward to join forces that would
oppose those below. Harry, young as he was, recognized that his own
state would be more fiercely divided than any other by the great strife.

But Federal and Confederate alike preserved the semblance of peace as
they gathered at Frankfort for the political struggle over the state.
Colonel Kenton and his son took the train at a point about forty miles
from the capital, and they found it crowded with public men going
from Louisville to Frankfort. It was the oldest railroad west of the
Alleghanies, and among the first ever built. The coaches swung around
curves, and dust and particles flew in at the windows, but the speed was
a relief after the crawling of the stage and Harry stretched himself
luxuriously on the plush seat.