ace and asked to be relieved as soon as
the convenience of the judge would allow it. He tried to keep me with
gentle persuasion and higher pay, but I was firm. Then I wrote a long
letter to my friend the Senator.

Again I had chosen my way and with due regard to the compass.

CHAPTER XVII

THE MAN WITH THE SCYTHE

It was late in June before I was able to disengage myself from the work
of the judge's office. Meanwhile there had been blood shed back in the
hills. One of the sheriff's posse had been severely wounded by a bullet
and had failed to serve the writs. The judge had appealed to the
governor. People were talking of "the rent war."

Purvis had returned to St. Lawrence County and hired to my uncle for the
haying. He had sent me a letter which contained the welcome information
that the day he left the stage at Canton, he had seen Miss Dunkelberg on
the street.

"She was lookin' top-notch--stop't and spoke to me," he went on. "You
cood a nocked me down with a fether I was that scairt. She ast me how
you was an' I lookt her plum in the eye an' I says: all grissul from his
head to his heels, mam, an' able to lick Lew Latour, which I seen him do
in quick time an' tolable severe. He can fight like a bob-tailed cat
when he gits a-goin', I says."

What a recommendation to the sweet, unsullied spirit of Sally! Without
knowledge of my provocation what would she think of me? He had endowed
me with all the frightfulness of his own cherished ideal, and what was I
to do about it? Well, I was going home and would try to see her.

What a joy entered my heart when I was aboard the steamboat, at last,
and on my way to all most dear to me! As I entered Lake Champlain I
consulted the map and decided to leave the boat at Chimney Point to find
Kate Fullerton, who had written to the schoolmaster from Canterbury. My
aunt had said in a letter that old Kate was living there and that a
great change had come over her. So I went ashore and hired a horse of
the ferryman--one of those "Green Mountain ponies" of which my uncle had
told me: "They'll take any gait that suits ye, except a slow one, an'
keep it to the end o' the road."

I think that I never had a horse so bent on reaching that traditional
"end of the road." He was what they called a "racker" those days, and a
rocking-chair was not easier to ride. He took me swiftly across the wide
flat and over the hills and seemed to resent my effort to slow him.

I passed through