d were plainly in greater
numbers. Old Jasper was being surrounded, and he mounted again, and all,
followed by a chorus of bullets and triumphant yells, fled for a wooded
slope in the rear of the court-house. A dozen Lewallens were prisoners,
and must give up or starve. There was savage joy in the Stetson crowd,
and many-footed rumor went all ways that night.

Despite sickness and Rome's strict order, Isom had ridden down to the
mill. Standing in the doorway, he and old Gabe saw up the river, where
the water broke into foam over the ford, a riderless gray horse plunging
across. Later it neighed at a gate under Wolf's Head, and Martha
Lewallen ran out to meet it. Across under Thunderstruck Knob that
night the old Stetson mother listened to Isom's story of the fight with
ghastly joy in her death-marked face.

XI

ALL night the court-house was guarded and on guard. At one corner of
the square Rufe Stetson, with a few men, sat on watch in old Sam Day's
cabin--the fortress of the town, built for such a purpose, and used for
it many times before. The prisoners, too, were alert, and no Stetson
ventured into the open square, for the moon was high; an exposure
anywhere was noted instantly by the whistle of a rifle-ball, and the
mountaineer takes few risks except under stress of drink or passion.
Rome Stetson had placed pickets about the town wherever surprise was
possible. All night he patrolled the streets to keep his men in such
readiness as he could for the attack that the Lewallens would surely
make to rescue their living friends and to avenge the dead ones.

But the triumph was too great and unexpected. Two Braytons were dead;
several more were prisoners with young Jasper in the courthouse; and
drinking began.

As the night deepened without attack the Stetsons drank more, and grew
reckless. A dance was started. Music and "moonshine" were given to every
man who bore a Winchester. The night was broken with drunken yells, the
random discharge of fire-arms, and the mono-tone of heavy feet. The two
leaders were helpless, and the inaction of the Lewallens puzzled them.
Chafed with anxiety, they kept their eyes on the court-house or on the
thicket of gloom where their enemies lay. But the woods were as quiet
as the pall of shadows over them. Once Rome, making his rounds, saw a
figure crawling through a field of corn. It looked like Crump's, but
before he could fire the man rolled like a ball down the bushy bank
to the