own
on the floor with so vigorous a thump that it had a certain profane
effect; then having from under his bushy gray eyebrows gazed at the
diminishing group till it was but a dim speck in the distance, he went
in muttering, banging the door as if to shut out and reject the sight.
His objection might have been intensified had he known that the days
were at hand when legislative wisdom would still further reduce this
engine of the law, making it consist of one road commissioner and two
freeholders, the trio still pridefully denominated a "jury of view."

Others, however, favoring the enterprise, cheerfully fell into the
line of march; and as the way lengthened the cavalcade grew, mustering
recruits as it went.

Disputatious voices suddenly sounded loud on the clear air in front of
them, mingled with the thud of horses' hoofs, the jingle of spurs, and
now and again the whinny of a colt; and at the intersection of the
trail with a narrow winding path there rode into view old "Persimmon"
Sneed,--as he was sometimes disrespectfully nicknamed, owing to a
juvenile and voracious fondness for the most toothsome delicacy of
autumn woods,--arguing loudly, and with a lordly intolerance of
contradiction, with two men who accompanied him, while his sleek
claybank mare also argued loudly with her colt. She had much ado to
pace soberly forward, even under the coercion of whip and spur, while
her madcap scion galloped wildly ahead or lagged far in the rear, and
made now and then excursions into the woods, out of sight, to gratify
some adolescent curiosity, or perhaps, after the fashion of other and
human adolescents, to relish the spectacle of the maternal anxiety.
Ever and anon the sound of the mare's troubled call rang on the air.
Then the colt would come with a burst of speed, a turbulent rush, out
of the underbrush, and, with its keen head-tones of a whinny, all
funnily treble and out of tune, dash on in advance. The rider of this
preoccupied steed was a grizzled, lank, thin-visaged mountaineer, with
a tuft of beard on his chin, but a shaven jowl, where, however, the
black-and-gray stubble of several days' avoidance of the razor put
forth unabashed. He shook his finger impressively at the jury of view
as he approached them.

"Ef ye put this hyar road through my land," he said solemnly, "I'll be
teetotally ruinationed. The cattle-thievin' that'll go on, with the
woods so open an' the road so convenient, an' yit no travel sca'cely,