were hazy as an
unpleasant dream.

With the newly acquired calm which surprised him, Warren Jarvis left no
stone unturned to ascertain, with quiet inquiries, the location of Jim
Marcum.

There was no clew. The man had mounted a horse on the day of the
shooting, to disappear down the dusty Kentucky road, leaving the
village far behind and ignoring the possible escape by railroad. His
simplicity was cunning, for the blue hills offered more avenues of
disappearance than the iron roadbed of the local transportation.

Equally cunning, however, was his determined pursuer. Warren Jarvis,
after burying his parents, and making the conventional round of
respectful ceremonies, started again for his neglected business in New
York. Here he planned to adjust his affairs, then to return to the
mountain country, by a roundabout route, to begin his man-hunt,
_incognito_ and unsuspected.

"I'll cover every mountain trail, every valley path until I find Jim
Marcum," he confided to Major Selby, his father's closest friend, as
they stood on the train platform waiting for the final minute of
departure. "When it happens I will let you know, Major. Until that
time, good-by, and God bless you."

The train had come, and unaccompanied by Rusty Snow this time, Jarvis
clambered up the steps to wave to the old Kentuckian. As the major
turned away, he stroked his snowy mustache with a shrewd twinkle in his
blue eyes, to soliloquize:

"I calculate the boy will make his father proud. The old feud blood
runs in the Jarvis veins, and even the North can't spoil him. I wonder
why Rusty didn't go along--that darky will be broken-hearted to be left
behind on the old place."

But Rusty knew very well why he had been left behind!

And with all his jolly laughter, plump complacency, and characteristic
African simplicity, Rusty Snow possessed an inherent faculty of subtle
concentration which had served the family of Jarvis since the days when
he had been a slave pickanninny.

A week or more he spent in the peaceful Southern hamlet of Meadow
Green, imbibing gin and ginger "pop" in the saloons frequented by those
walking bureaus of information, the negro barbers. He consorted with
darky jockeys and horse-trainers--this was the center of the great
thoroughbred breeding district--and everywhere he went, with glistening
smiles, laughing eyes, and infectious amiability, he bore one query in
his mind. Where was Jim Marcum?

The query seemed unanswerable.