e plan for the
capture of the Moonshiners, Sis Poteet was growing lovelier every day.
She was a great favourite with the teachers of the academy and with
everybody. As a general thing, she avoided the public square when
riding to and from the school, but it was hats off with all the men
when she did go clattering down the street, and some of the romantic
dry-goods clerks sent their sighs after her. Sighs are frequently very
effective with school-girls, but those that followed Sis Poteet fell
short and were wasted on the air; and she continued to ride from the
mountain to the valley and from the valley to the mountain in profound
ignorance of the daily sensation she created among the young men of
Gullettsville, to whom her fine figure, her graceful ways, and her
thrillingly beautiful face were the various manifestations of a
wonderful revelation.

Naturally enough, the Government took no account of Sis Poteet. The
commissioner at Washington conferred with the marshal for Georgia by
mail, and begged him to exert himself to the utmost to break up the
business of illicit distilling in the Hog Mountain Range. In view of an
important election about to be held in some doubtful State in the North
or West, the worthy commissioner at Washington even suggested the
propriety of another armed raid, to be made up of deputy-marshals and a
detachment of men from the Atlanta garrison. But the marshal for
Georgia did not fall in with this suggestion. He was of the opinion
that if a raid was to be made at all it should not be made blindly, and
he fortified his opinion with such an array of facts and arguments that
the Bureau finally left the whole matter to his discretion.

Early one morning, in the summer of 1879, a stranger on horseback rode
up the straggling red road that formed the principal business
thoroughfare of Gullettsville, and made his way toward the
establishment known as the Gullettsville Hotel. The chief advertisement
of the hotel was the lack of one. A tall worm-eaten post stood in front
of the building, but the frame in which the sign had swung was empty.
This post, with its empty frame, was as significant as the art of
blazonry could have made it. At any rate, the stranger on horseback--a
young man--pressed forward without hesitation. The proprietor himself,
Squire Lemuel Pleasants, was standing upon the low piazza as the young
man rode up. The squire wore neither coat nor hat. His thumbs were
caught behind his suspend