k you candid, do you feel peevish?"

"Not in particular," and Yancy put aside his rifle.

"I'm a-going to trust you, Bob," said Balaam. And forsaking the shelter
of the sweetgum he shuffled up the slope.

"How are you, Charley?" asked Yancy, as they shook hands.

"Only just tolerable, Bob. You've been warranted--Dave Blount swore hit
on to you." He displayed a sheet of paper covered with much writing and
decorated with a large seal. Yancy viewed this formidable document with
respect, but did not offer to take it.

"Read it," he said mildly. Balaam scratched his head.

"I don't know that hit's my duty to do that, Bob. Hit's my duty to
serve it on to you. But I can tell you what's into hit, leavin' out the
law--which don't matter nohow."

At this juncture Uncle Sammy's bent form emerged from the path that led
off through the woods in the direction of the Bellamy cabin. With the
patriarch was a stranger. Now the presence of a stranger on Scratch
Hill was an occurrence of such extraordinary rarity that the warrant
instantly became a matter of secondary importance.

"Howdy, Charley. Here, Bob Yancy, you shake hands with Bruce
Carrington," commanded Uncle Sammy. At the name both Yancy and Balaam
manifested a quickened interest. They saw a man in the early twenties,
clean-limbed and broad-shouldered, with a handsome face and shapely
head. "Yes, sir, hit's a grandson of Tom Carrington that used to own the
grist-mill down at the Forks. Yo're some sort of wild-hog kin to him,
Bob--yo' mother was a cousin to old Tom. Her family was powerful upset
at her marrying a Yancy. They say Tom cussed himself into a 'pleptic fit
when the news was fetched him."

"Where you located at, Mr. Carrington?" asked Yancy. But Carrington was
not given a chance to reply. Uncle Sammy saved him the trouble.

"Back in Kentucky. He tells me he's been follerin' the water. What's the
name of that place where Andy Jackson fit the British?"

"New Orleans," prompted Carrington good naturedly.

"That's hit--he takes rafts down the river to New Orleans, then he comes
back on ships to Baltimore, or else he hoofs it no'th overland." Uncle
Sammy had acquired a general knowledge of the stranger's habits and
pursuits in an incredibly brief space of time. "He wants to visit the
Forks," he added.

"I'm shortly goin' that way myself, Mr. Carrington, and I'll be pleased
of your company--but first I got to get through with Bob Yancy," said
Balaam, and again