of strength or
muscle control.

"You must be Boyd--" Drew blinked, something in him still clinging to
the memory of Sheldon, Sheldon who had helped to build the tree house.
Why, Boyd was only a small boy, usually tagging his impatient elders,
not this tall, almost exact copy of his dead brother.

"Sure, I'm Boyd. And it's true then, ain't it, Drew? General Morgan's
coming back here? Where?" He glanced over his shoulder once more as if
expecting to see a troop prance up through the bushes along the stream.

Drew holstered the revolver. "Rumors of that around?" he asked casually.

"Some," Boyd answered. "The Yankee-lovers called out the Home Guard
yesterday. What sort of a chance do they think they'll have against
_General Morgan_?"

Drew moved toward the roan's picket rope. As his fingers closed on that
he thought fast. Just as the Mattocks and the Forbeses were Union, the
Barretts were, or had been, Southern in sympathy. Most of Kentucky was
divided that way now. But what might have been true two years ago was
not necessarily a fact today. One took no chances.

"You come back to see your grandfather, Drew?"

"Any reason why I should?" The whole countryside must know very well
the state of affairs between Alexander Mattock and Drew Rennie.

"Well, he's been sick for so long.... Didn't you know about that?" Boyd
must have read Drew's answer in his face, for he spilled out the news
quickly. "He had some kind of a fit when he heard Murray was killed----"

Drew dropped the picket rope. "Uncle Murray ... dead?"

Boyd nodded. "Killed at Murfreesboro in sixty-two, but the news didn't
come till about a week after the battle. Mr. Mattock was in town when
Judge Hagerstorm told him ... just turned red in the face and fell down
in the middle of the street. They brought him home, and sometimes he
sits outdoors. But he can't walk too good and he talks thick; you can
hardly understand him."

"So that's why Aunt Marianna's in charge." Drew thought of Uncle Murray
swept away by time and the chances of war as so many others--and no
emotion stirred within him. Murray Mattock had firmly agreed with his
father concerning the child who was the result of a runaway match
between his sister Melanie and a despised Texan. But Uncle Murray's
death must indeed have been a paralyzing blow for the old man at Red
Springs, with all his pride and his plans for his only son.

"Yes, Cousin Marianna runs Red Springs," Boyd assented, "she and Ra