st.

Young Pete Doane was there, and since he was the son of the man under
whose roof the stirring drama had been staged, he assumed a magnified
importance and affected a sphinx-like silence of discretion to mask his
actual ignorance. Hump Doane did not confide everything he knew to this
son whom he at once loved and disdained.

Young Doane stood indulging in rustic repartee with bright-eyed Elviry
Prooner, a deep-bosomed Diana, who, next to Dorothy Thornton, was
accounted the "comeliest gal along siv'ral creeks."

When Bas Rowlett joined the group, however, interest fell promptly away
from Pete and centred around this more legitimate pole. But Bas turned
on them all a sullenly uncommunicative face, and the idlers were quick
to recognize and respect his unapproachable mood and to stand wide of
his temper.

After he had bought twist tobacco and lard and salt and chocolate drops,
Bas summoned Pete away from his temporary inamorata with an imperative
jerk of his head and the youthful hillsman responded with the promptness
of a lieutenant receiving instructions from his colonel. When the two
were mounted, the son of the hunchback gained a more intimate knowledge
of actual conditions than he had been able to glean at home.

"Ther upshot of ther matter's this, Pete," declared Bas, earnestly. "Sam
Opdyke lef' thet meetin' yestidday with his mind made up ter slay this
man Thornton--an' ther way things hev shaped up now, hit won't no
fashion do. He's got ter be halted--an' I kain't afford ter be knowd in
ther matter one way ner t'other. Go see him an' tell him he'll incense
everybody an' bring on hell's own mischief ef he don't hold his hand.
Tell him his chanst'll come afore long but right now, I say he's got ter
_quit hit_."

An hour later the fiery-tempered fellow, still smarting because his
advice had been spurned yesterday, straightened up from the place
outside his stable door where he was mending a saddle girth and listened
while the envoy from Bas Rowlett preached patience.

But it was Bas himself who had coached Sam Opdyke with the incitement
and inflammatory counsel which he had voiced the day before. Now the man
had taken fire from the flames of his own kindling--and that fire was
not easy to quench. He had been, at first, a disciple but he had
converted himself and had been contemptuously treated into the bargain.
The grievance he paraded had become his own, and the nature Bas had
picked for such a purpose wa