nders then. The people of the copper faces prowled
with the wolf and whooped along the Gauley. The Dwarfs lurked in the
out-of-the-way corners of the mountains, trooping down in crooked droves
to burn and kill for the very joy of doing evil. And who could say what
unearthly thing went by when the wind shouted along the ridges? The folk
then were but few in the Hills, and each busy with keeping the life in
him. The land was good, broad waters and rich hill-tops, where the
blue-grass grew though no man sowed it. A land made ready for a great
people when it should come. With Simon came others from the south
country, who felled the forest and let in the sunlight, and made wide
pastures for the bullock, and so elbowed out the wandering and the evil.

High against the chimney, on two dogwood forks, rested the long rifle
with its fishtail sight and the brass plate on the stock for the bullets
and the "patching." Below it hung the old powder-horn, its wooden plug
dangling from a string,--tools of the long ago. Closing one's eyes one
could see the tall grandsires fighting in the beech forest, a brown
patch of hide sighted over the brass knife-blade bead, and death, and to
load again with the flat neck of the bullet set in the palm of the hand
and covered with powder.

That yesterday was gone, but old Simon was doing with to-day. On two
benches was a cart wheel, with its hickory spokes radiating like fingers
from the locust hub, and on the floor were the mallet and the steel
chisel with its tough oak handle. Stacked up in the corner were bundles
of straight hickory, split from the butt of the great shell-bark log;
round cuts of dry locust, and long timbers of white and red oak, and
quarters of the tough sugars, seasoning, hard as iron. With these were
the axe, the wedge, the dogwood gluts, and the mauls made with no little
labour from the curled knots of the chestnut oak, and hooped with an
iron tire-piece.

It was said on the country side that old Simon knew lost secrets of
woodcraft taught by the early man;--in what moon to fell the shingle
timber that it might not curl on the roof; on what face of the hill the
sassafras root was red; how to know the toughest hickory by hammering on
its trunk; when twigs cut from the forest would grow, if thrust in the
earth; and that secret day of all the year when an axe, stuck into the
bark of a tree, would deaden it to the root.

Simon Betts was not a man of many words. He smoked in the