e stars pierced
coldly through the hard steel of a winter sky. My other skies had been
softer.

The mountains, under a young moon, stood out black and forbidding; frost
mists hung like frozen smoke on the lowlands. From somewhere about the
house came the nasal singing of a mountaineer to the plunking of a
tuneless banjo. His voice rose and quavered and fell with more care that
his words be distinct than that his notes be true. He had chosen a song
composed by a local bard, and as I stood gazing off across the sea of
moonlight and mist he alone broke and tortured the silence.

"Right down here in Adamson coun-tee
Where they have no church of our Lord,
Frank Smith sold Pate Art'b'ry some whis-key
And caused him to get shot in the for'd."

His fellows, in all solemnity, took up the ludicrous chorus and
trumpeted in through their noses.

"Oh, whis-key's the root of all ev-il,
It fills up a drunkard's hell,
So why not vote out this old ev-il
And say farewell, whis-key, farewell!"

I smiled as I thought how little they were changed from rude retainers
in an old, oak-raftered hall of feudal England. I felt as remote from
civilization as though I were living behind the moat and draw-bridge of
some embattled baron. In such a place anything might happen.

And then as the singers fell silent again, I became aware of a faint and
distant sound of voices. The hound which lay curled upon the top step of
the porch rose and sniffed the keen air, his bristles rising. In a
moment he was off toward the road, barking blatantly.

The voices became more distinct and I moved from my position in the
moonlight to the corner of the house where the shadow fell black enough
to swallow me. As I did so a shuffling of feet in the loft told me that
the men there had also caught the sound. The approaching party must be
coming to this house, since we had no neighbor within three-quarters of
a mile and the road ran out and ended at our gate.

Shortly a group of horsemen came into view, climbing the hill a quarter
of a mile away. They seemed to be riding close together, knee to knee,
and except when they crossed the intervals of the moon's spotlight one
could see them only in a massed effect. They came to a halt in the
shadow at a little distance from the gate.

The noiseless opening of a door and a momentary glimpse of a stealthy,
rifle-armed figure slipping out into the shadow of the kitchen ass