the laws
of gravity.

Although assistance from Ambrose arrived too late, still he lingered.
"Ain't you no faith in what men undertakes 'thout advice from women,
Miss Susan?" he inquired, and when that lady, breathless for once, was
able only to shake her head, he gave her a slow, anxious smile,
whispering, "I'm none too sure but you're right," before moving along.

Notwithstanding, at midnight on the same night Ambrose and Miner were
riding side by side through the Kentucky woods at the head of a small
cavalcade that had come together silently on the outskirts of
Pennyroyal. The riders wore masks, excepting Ambrose, who, with face
uncovered, squirmed restlessly upon the sunken back of old Liza.

"The men have give their word there ain't nobody goin' to git hurt," he
repeated three or four times, until finally Miner turned upon him.

"Mebbe you'd better not have went, Ambrose, ef you haven't the nerve,"
he remarked testily.

And at this the tall man stiffened. "It ain't nerve, Miner. I just ain't
never liked a ten-man-against-one game in my life, and I ain't hidin' my
sentiments. No more than the rest of you do I want this Yankee teacher
bein' brought into Pennyrile to show us _our_ business, but I'm with
this crowd to-night to see he don't get hurt 'cept in his feelin's."

"He's got to git, notwithstandin'!" Miner's attitude was that of a
fierce little dog, who even when he couldn't change a situation liked to
bark in order to hear the noise.

These men had both fought on the Southern side in the Civil War, but
with a difference. Miner had plunged into it at once with pigheadedness
and with passion; the full story of why Ambrose had failed to go south
when his comrades did has not been told by Mrs. Barrows. At that time
most men's hearts were on the one side or the other. Ambrose Thompson's
heart was on both sides at once. Indeed, during the first hateful years
of the war he had felt like a child whose equally beloved parents were
engaged in getting a divorce, and not until after Miner was wounded and
the South had showed herself the weaker did he heed her mothering call.
And then he was never much of a success as a soldier because of his
habit of so frequently misplacing his gun while he helped on a weaker
brother, and because of his never having been known to fire at anything
in particular. Still his companions did not count him a coward, merely
recognizing that his imagination had a longer reach than theirs.