laboured long and preached fierily
for his belief, until the hoar-frost of time had whitened his head. It
was as if when the hour approached for him to lay down his scrip and
staff he had recognized the strength and possible ardour of a young
disciple to come after him.

But after a little that emotional wave, which had unconsciously
straightened his bent shoulders and brought his head erect, subsided
into the realization of less inspiriting facts.

"Atter all," he said, thoughtfully, "I've got ter hev speech with old
Jim Rowlett afore this matter gits published abroad. He's done held ther
same notions I have--about Dorothy an' Bas--an' I owes hit ter him ter
make a clean breast of what's come ter pass."

The wounded man in the chair was gazing off through the window, and he
was deeply disturbed. He stood sworn to kill or be killed by the man
whom these two custodians of peace or war had elected in advance as a
clan head and a link uniting the factions. If he himself were now
required to assume the mantle of leadership, it was hard to see how that
quarrel could be limited to a private scope.

"When I come over hyar," he said, steadily and deliberately, "I sought
ter live peaceable--an' quiet. I didn't aim, an' I don't seek now, ter
hold place as head of no feud-faction."

"Nuther did I seek ter do hit." The old man's voice was again the rapt
and fiery utterance of the zealot. "Thar wasn't nuthin' I wouldn't of
chose fust--but when a man's duty calls ter him, ef he's a true man in
God's eyes, he hain't got no rather in the matter which ner whether.
He's beholden ter obey! Besides--" the note of fanatical exaltation
diminished into a more placid evenness--"besides, I've done told ye I
only sought ter hev ye lead toward peace an' quiet--not ter mix in no
warfarin'."

So a message went along the waterways to the house where old Jim Rowlett
dwelt, and old Jim, to whose ears troubling rumours had already come
stealing, mounted his "ridin'-critter" and responded forthwith and in
person.

He came, trustful as ever of his old partner, in the task of shepherding
wild flocks, yet resentful of the girl's rumoured rebellion against what
was to have been, in effect, a marriage of state.

Before starting he had talked long and earnestly with his kinsman, Bas
Rowlett, and as a result he saw in Bas a martyr nobly bearing his
chastening, and in the stranger a man unknown and tinged with a
suspicious mystery.

Jim Rowlett lis