lded on the pommel of
his saddle--his dim blue eyes misty, the jaunty forage cap a mockery of
his iron-gray hair, and the flaps of his coat fanning either side like
mournful wings.

And Flitter Bill muttered to himself:

"Atter he's gone long enough fer these things to blow over, I'm going to
bring him back and give him another chance--yes, damme if I don't git
him back."

And Bill dropped his remorseful eye to the order in his hand. Like the
handwriting of the order that lifted Mayhall like magic into power, the
handwriting of this order, that dropped him like a stone--was Flitter
Bill's own.

THE PARDON OF BECKY DAY

The missionary was young and she was from the North. Her brows were
straight, her nose was rather high, and her eyes were clear and gray.
The upper lip of her little mouth was so short that the teeth just under
it were never quite concealed. It was the mouth of a child and it gave
the face, with all its strength and high purpose, a peculiar pathos that
no soul in that little mountain town had the power to see or feel. A
yellow mule was hitched to the rickety fence in front of her and she
stood on the stoop of a little white frame-house with an elm switch
between her teeth and gloves on her hands, which were white and looked
strong. The mule wore a man's saddle, but no matter--the streets were
full of yellow pools, the mud was ankle-deep, and she was on her way to
the sick-bed of Becky Day.

There was a flood that morning. All the preceding day the rains had
drenched the high slopes unceasingly. That night, the rain-clear forks
of the Kentucky got yellow and rose high, and now they crashed together
around the town and, after a heaving conflict, started the river on one
quivering, majestic sweep to the sea.

Nobody gave heed that the girl rode a mule or that the saddle was not
her own, and both facts she herself quickly forgot. This half log, half
frame house on a corner had stood a siege once. She could yet see bullet
holes about the door. Through this window, a revenue officer from the
Blue Grass had got a bullet in the shoulder from a garden in the rear.
Standing in the post-office door only just one month before, she herself
had seen children scurrying like rabbits through the back-yard fences,
men running silently here and there, men dodging into doorways, fire
flashing in the street and from every house--and not a sound but the
crack of pistol and Winchester; for the mountain men deal