which Young Denny was waiting. Old Jerry, who drove the
post route, and had driven it as long as Denny could remember, was
late tonight--he was even later than usual for Saturday night--and
Denny's hand tightened nervously upon the shaft of the pike-pole as he
realized the cause of the delay.

For many weeks he had heard but little else mentioned on the village
streets on his infrequent trips after groceries and grain. The winter
sledding was over; the snow had gone off a month back with the first
warm rain; just that afternoon he had made the last trip behind his
heavy team down from the big timber back on the ridges, but during
that month the other drivers with whom he had been hauling logs since
fall had talked of nothing but the coming event.

From where he stood, looking out across the valley, Young Denny could
see the huge bulk of the Maynard homestead--Judge Maynard's great box
of a house--silhouetted against the skyline, and back of it high piles
of timber--framing and sheathing for the new barn that was going up.
For Judge Maynard was going to give a barn-raising--an old-fashioned
barn-raising such as the hill country had not seen in twenty years.

Already Young Denny knew that there were to be two team captains who
would choose from among the best men that the country boasted, the
very pick of strength and endurance and daring. And these, when the
word was given, would swarm up with mallet and lock-pin over their
half of the allotted work, in the race to drive home the last spike
and wedge into place the last scantling. For days now with a grave
sort of satisfaction which he hardly understood himself, Young Denny
had time after time put all his strength against a reluctant log,
skidding timber back on the hillside, and watched the lithe pike-pole
bend half double under the steadily increasing strain. Somehow he felt
very sure that one or the other of the captains would single him out;
they couldn't afford to pass him by.

But in that one respect only was Judge Maynard's barn-raising to be
like those that had passed down into history a score of years back.
Every other detail, as befitted the hospitality of the wealthiest man
in the hill country, was planned on a scale of magnificence before
unheard of, and Denny Bolton stood and touched furtively with the tip
of his tongue lips that were dry with the glamour of it all.

It was to be a masquerade--the dance which followed on the wide, clean
floors--not the