conviction of those guilty of
the assassination of Senator Goebel, and, heartened by this spurring,
the pack of detectives, professional and amateur, had cast off full-cry.

Saul Fulton lay in jail all that winter without trial. Upon the motion
of the Commonwealth, his day in court was postponed by continuance after
continuance.

"I reckon," suggested Asa bluntly, "they aims ter let him sulter in jail
long enough ter kinderly fo'ce him ter drag in a few more fellers
besides himself--but hit won't profit 'em none."

That winter spent its dreary monotony, and through its months Boone
Wellver was growing in mind and character, as well as in bone and
muscle. McCalloway began to see the blossoming of his Quixotically
fantastic idea into some hope and semblance of reality. The boy's brain
was acquisitive and flaming with ambition, and Victor McCalloway was no
routine schoolmaster but an experimenter in the laboratory of human
elements. He was working with a character which he sought to bring by
forced marches from the America of a quaint, broad-hearted past to the
America of the present--and future. Under his hand the pupil was
responding.

The slate-gray ramparts of the hills reeked with the wet of thawing
snows. Watercourses swelled into the freshet-volume of the
"spring-tide." Into the breezes crept a touch of softer promise, and in
sheltered spots buds began to redden and swell. Then came the pale
tenderness of greens, and the first shy music of bird-notes. The sodden
and threadbare neutrality of winter was flung aside for the white
blossoming of dogwood, and in its wake came the pink foam of laurel
blossom.

On one of those tuneful days, while Boone sat on the doorstep of Victor
McCalloway's house, listening to a story of a campaign far up the Nile,
Asa Gregory came along the road, with his long elastic stride, and
halted there. He smiled infectiously as he took the proffered chair and
crumbled leaf tobacco between his fingers for the filling of his cob
pipe.

For a while the talk ran in simple neighbourhood channels. They spoke of
"drappin' an' kiverin'" in the corn fields, and the uncomplicated
activities of farm life. But, after a time, Asa reached into his hip
pocket and drew out a rumpled newspaper, which he tendered to Victor
McCalloway.

"Mr. McCalloway," he said quietly, "ye're a friend of mine, an' right
now I have sore need of counsel with a man of wisdom. I'd be beholden
ter ye ef so be ye'd read th