u to visit me at this hour?"

The dog just continued to wag his tail and lick the big hands that
petted him. Rover had grown to like the big strong young man who was so
often with his mistress, and thought perhaps a call at this time would
not be out of place.

"This country is terribly agitated just now. Rover," said Wade. "You
must watch your mistress closely, and should you think any harm is
likely to befall her, you must come and tell me quick."

The dog wagged his tail, seeming to understand fully what Wade was
saying.

CHAPTER VIII

Up near the mountain no one ever spoke to another concerning anything
that happened. Not a word ever escaped the lips of those sturdy farmers.
If somebody was killed, that somebody was buried by his own people, and
the wailing and gnashing of teeth was confined chiefly to the unhappy
kin-folk. There were none to console them, no one condoled with them,
they grieved in solitude.

In the village it was quite different, though even there no one dared to
speak openly against an individual or a "click" or "clan." The fact that
someone had been murdered by the terrible "Black ghosts of the night,"
or that the settlers had been terrified by the fearful, hideous howlings
of the ravagers of peace, concerned everyone in the village, and old
women talked of it over the fence, old men jabbered about it as they sat
on dry-goods boxes, whittling on the soft pine boxes or squirting great
streams of tobacco juice between their two first fingers, watching it
until it struck the earth some six feet away or flowed gently down the
boot leg of someone standing dangerously near. One old man, fearless on
account of his many years in the country, did say once that "them damn
Riders ought all to be hung by the neck until they were dead." When he
had said that he dropped his head to spit, and when he raised it again
he was alone, every man near him having slipped quietly away, leaving
him to his own way of thinking.

Men gathered together up the valley way, but they talked farm products
straight and "wunk" at each other in a knowing way. There was one farm
upon which an immense tobacco crop had sprung up, and the eyes of every
farmer in the community were cast toward it. Not in many years had so
many men passed that way. Not in many days had there been so many
clandestine meetings over the country, mostly around and beyond the
mountain. What was it all about? It surely meant ill for someone, but