windowless shacks, or fled
from a strange face, he campaigned among the illiterate elders and
oftentimes he sickened at what he saw.

Yet these people of yesterday were his people--and they offered him of
their pitiful best even when their ignorance was so incredible that the
name of the divinity was to them only "somethin' a feller cusses
with"--and he felt that his campaign was prospering.

One day, however, when he returned to his own neighbourhood after an
absence across the mountain, he seemed to discover an insidious and
discouraging change in the tide--a shifting of sentiment to an almost
sullen reserve. An intangible resentment against him was in the air.

It was Araminta Gregory who construed the mystery for him. She had heard
all the gossip of the "grannies," which naturally did not come to his
own ears.

"I'm atellin' ye this, Boone, because _somebody_ ought ter forewarn ye,"
she explained. "Thar's a story goin' round about, an' I reckon hit's
hurtin' ye. Somebody hes done spread ther norration thet ye hain't
loyal ter yore own blood no more.--They're tellin' hit abroad thet ye've
done turned yore back on a mountain gal--atter lettin' her 'low ye aimed
ter wed with her." She paused there, but added a moment later: "I reckon
ye wouldn't thank me ter name no names--an', anyhow, ye knows who I
means."

"I know," he said, in a very quiet and deliberate voice. "Please go
on--and, as you say, it ain't needful to call no names."

"These witch-tongued busybodies," concluded the woman, her eyes flaring
into indignation, "is spreadin' hit broadcast thet ye plumb abandoned
thet gal fer a furrin' woman--thet wouldn't skeercely wipe her feet on
ye--ef ye laid down in ther road in front of her!"

Boone's posture grew taut as he listened, and it remained so during the
long-ensuing silence. He could feel a furious hammering in his temples,
and for a little time blood-red spots swam before his eyes. But when at
length he spoke, it was to say only, "I'm beholden to you, Araminty. A
man has need to know what his enemies are sayin'."

It was one of those sub-surface attacks, which Boone could not
discuss--or even seem to recognize without bringing into his political
forensics the names of two women--so he must face the ambushed
accusation of disloyalty without striking back.

In Marlin Town, one court day, Jim Blair was addressing a crowd from the
steps of the court house, and at his side stood Tom Carr, his kinsman.