suit of clothes in his saddle bags. The rifle across his back
would attract no attention, as all the men in the mountains carried
rifles.

Jarvis had instructed Harry carefully about the road or path, and as
the boy was already an experienced traveler with an excellent sense of
direction, there was no danger of his getting lost in the wilderness.

Jarvis, Ike, and Mrs. Simmons gave him farewells which were full of
feeling. Aunt Suse had come down the brick walk, tap-tapping with her
cane, as Harry stood at the gate ready to mount his horse.

"Good-bye, Aunt Susan," he said. "I came a stranger, but this house has
been made a home to me."

She peered up at him, and Harry saw that once more her old eyes were
flaming with the light he had seen there when he arrived.

"Good-bye, governor," she said, holding out a wrinkled and trembling
hand. "I am proud that our house has sheltered you, but it is not for
the last time. You will come again, and you will be thin and pale and
in rags, and you will fall at the door. I see you coming with these two
eyes of mine."

"Hush, Aunt Suse," exclaimed Mrs. Simmons. "It is not Governor Ware,
it is his great-grandson, and you mustn't send him away tellin' of
terrible things that will happen to him."

"I'm not afraid," said Harry, "and I hope that I'll see Aunt Susan and
all of you again."

He lifted her hand and kissed it in the old-fashioned manner.

She smiled and he heard her murmur:

"It is the great governor's way. He kissed my hand like that once
before, when I went to Frankfort on the lumber raft."

"Good-bye, Harry," repeated Jarvis. "If you're bound to fight I reckon
that's jest what you're bound to do, an' it ain't no good for me to say
anythin'. Be shore you follow the trail jest as I laid it out to you
an' in two days you'll strike the Wilderness Road. After that it's
easy."

When Harry rode away something rose in his throat and choked him for a
moment. He knew that he would never again find more kindly people than
these simple mountaineers. Then in vivid phrases he heard once more the
old woman's prophecy: "You will come again, and you will be thin and
pale and in rags, and you will fall at the door." For a moment it
shadowed the sunlight. Then he laughed at himself. No one could see
into the future.

He was now across the valley and his path led along the base of the
mountain. He looked back and saw the four standing on the porch, Jarvis,
Ike