swered Molly, and
Jane Mason looked straight ahead and cut in with, "Molly Culpepper, if
you say another word, I'll never speak to you as long as I live." But
she glanced down at Barclay, who caught her eye and saw the smile she
was swallowing, and he cried: "I don't believe you ever said it,
Molly,--it must have been some one else." And when they had all had
their say,--all but Jane Mason,--John saw that she was crying, and
the others had to sing for ten minutes without her, before they could
coax away her temper. And crafty as he was, he did not know it was
temper--he thought it was something entirely different.

For the craft of youth always is clumsy. The business of youth is to
fight and to mate. Wherever there is young blood, there is "boot and
horse," and John Barclay in his early twenties felt in him the call
for combat. It came with the events that were forming about him. For
the war between the states had left the men restless and unsatisfied
who had come into the plain to make their homes. They had heard and
followed in their youth the call John Barclay was hearing, and after
the war was over, they were still impatient with the obstacles they
found in their paths. So Sycamore Ridge and Minneola, being rival
towns, had to fight. The men who made these towns knew no better
settlement than the settlement by force. And even during his first six
months at home from school, when John sniffed the battle from afar, he
was glad in his soul that the fight was coming. Sycamore Ridge had the
county-seat; but Minneola, having a majority of the votes in the
county, was trying to get the county-seat, and the situation grew so
serious for Sycamore Ridge that General Hendricks felt it necessary to
defeat Philemon Ward for the state senate so that Sycamore Ridge could
get a law passed that would prevent Minneola's majority from changing
the county-seat. This was done by a law which Hendricks secured,
giving the county commissioners the right to build a court-house by
direct levy, without a vote of the people,--a court-house so large
that it would settle the county-seat matter out of hand.

The general, however, took no chances even with his commissioners. For
he had his son elected as one, and with the knowledge that John was
investing in real estate in the Ridge and had an eye for the main
chance, the general picked John for the other commissioner. The place
was on the firing-line of the battle, and John took it almost
gree