common cause against judge and jury.

There had been, among that generation of Stacys, no such outstanding
figure as old Mark Towers, the indomitable lion of the hills. Kinnard
had followed Mark, bringing to the succession no such picturesque
savagery--but still a bold spirit, tempered by craft. In lieu of the
sledge blow he favored the smiling face with the dirk unsheathed behind
his back. Times were altering and to him mere leadership meant less
than enough. He was also covetous of wealth, in a land of meagerness.
To clan loyalty as an abstract principle he must have added such
obedience as comes only from fear--and men must know that to thwart him
was dangerous. Upon that principle, he had built his dominance until
men shaped even their court testimony to the pattern of his
requirements. At first the Stacy clan had challenged his autocracy, but
twenty years before, the truce had been made and, since no Stacy leader
had arisen of sufficient caliber to wrest from him the ascendency of
his guile and bold wits, he had triumphed and fattened in material
wealth.

The farm that he had "heired" from his father, with its few fallow
acres of river bottom, had spread gradually but graciously into
something like a domain.

He might now have moved his household to a smoother land and basked in
the security of fair affluence--but an invisible bond chains the
mountain-born to mountain environment. Highland nostrils shut
themselves against lowland air. Highland lips spit out as flat and
stale that water which does not gush from the source of living brooks.

There were enemies here who hungered for his life--a contingency which
he faced with open-eyed realization--enemies actuated by grievances
apart from feud cleavage. Three attempts upon his life, he had already
survived. Some day he would not escape. But that eventuality was more
welcome, despite its endless threat, than an ease that carried with it
surrender of his rude ascendency and the strong intoxication of petty
might.

For several years now he had been hearing tales of a Stacy youth who
bore the ear-marks of leadership, and from whom, some day, he might
expect a challenge of power. If such a test came, he must combat a
younger and fierier adversary when his own prime had passed.

Elsewhere in the hills waves of transition were encroaching on the old
order of lethargic ignorance. The hermit blindfold was being loosened
from eager eyes--and men like himself were being