war he returned to his
home in Virginia to find it in ruins, his slaves freed and his fields
mortgaged. He had pulled himself together for another start, and
had practiced law in the little town where his family had lived for
generations. Of his two sons, one was a ne'er-do-well. He was one of
those brilliant fellows of whom much is expected that never develops.
He had a taste for low company, married beneath him, and, after a career
that was a continual mortification and humiliation to his father, was
killed in a drunken brawl under disgraceful circumstances, leaving
behind a son named for the general. The second son of General Bannister
also died young, but not before he had proved his devotion to his father
by an exemplary life. He, too, was married and left an only son, also
named for the old soldier. The boys were about of an age and were well
matched in physical and mental equipment. But the general, who had taken
them both to live with him, soon discovered that their characters were
as dissimilar as the poles. One grandson was frank, generous, open as
the light; the other was of a nature almost degenerate. In fact, each
had inherited the qualities of his father. Tales began to come to the
old general's ears that at first he refused to credit. But eventually
it was made plain to him that one of the boys was a rake of the most
objectionable type.

There were many stormy scenes between the general and his grandson, but
the boy continued to go from bad to worse. After a peculiarly flagrant
case, involving the character of a respectable young girl, young Ned
Bannister was forbidden his ancestral home. It had been by means of his
cousin that this last iniquity of his had been unearthed, and the boy
had taken it to his grandfather in hot indignation as the last hope of
protecting the reputation of the injured girl. From that hour the evil
hatred of his cousin, always dormant in the heart, flamed into active
heat. The disowned youth swore to be revenged. A short time later the
general died, leaving what little property he had entirely to the one
grandson. This stirred again the bitter rage of the other. He set fire
to the house that had been willed his cousin, and took a train that
night for Wyoming. By a strange irony of fate they met again in the
West years later, and the enmity between them was renewed, growing every
month more bitter on the part of the one who called himself the King of
the Bighorn Country.

She b