re of public affairs,
he might be an onlooker or an actor.

CHAPTER X

A FEW days after that, he started back again to his mountains. With Saul
in jail and his wife returning to her people, there was nothing further
to hold him here. Indeed, he was anxious now to get home. Like one who
has been bewildered by a plethora of new experiences, he needed time to
digest them, and above all he wanted to talk with Victor McCalloway,
whose wisdom was, to his thinking, as that of a second Solomon. There,
too, was his other hero, Asa, who had returned to the hills as quietly
as he had left them. Boone was burning to know whether, in the whirlpool
of excitement there at Frankfort, his efforts to secure executive
clemency had met with success or failure.

When, immediately upon crossing Cedar Mountain, he presented himself at
McCalloway's house, he was somewhat nonplussed at the grave, almost
accusing, eyes which the hermit gentleman bent upon him.

"I've jest got back hyar from ther big world down below," announced the
boy, "an' I fared straight over hyar ter see ye fust thing." He paused,
a little crestfallen, to note that reserve of silence where he had
anticipated a warmth of welcome, and then he went on shyly: "Thar was
hell ter pay down thar at Frankfort town--an' I seed a good part of ther
b'ilin' with my own eyes."

Very slowly Victor McCalloway made response. "You have witnessed a
tragedy--a crime for which the guilty parties should pay with their
lives. Even then a scar will be left on the honour of your State."

Boone crowded his hands into his coat pockets and shivered in the wet
wind, for as yet he had not been invited across the threshold.

"I don't know nothin' about who done hit," he made calm assertion. "But
fellers like Saul Fulton 'peared ter 'low he plum needed killin."

"Fellows like Saul Fulton!"

The retired soldier drew a long breath, and his eyes narrowed. "You went
down there, Boone, with a kinsman who now stands accused of complicity.
The law presumes his innocence until it proves him guilty, but I'm not
thinking of him much, just now. I'm thinking of _you_." He paused as if
in deep anxiety, then added: "A boy may be led by reckless and wilful
men into--well--grave mistakes.... I believe in you, but you must answer
me one question, and you must answer it on your word of honour--as a
gentleman."

The boy's pupils widened interrogatively, and held those older eyes with
an unfaltering stead