fiddle and his lay, and he did not exactly sing the virtues of Billy
Bayhone. Evidently some partisan thought he ought, for he smote him on
the thigh with the toe of his boot and raised such a stir as a rude
stranger might had he smitten a troubadour in Arthur's Court. The crowd
thickened and surged, and four of the Guard emerged with the fiddler and
his assailant under arrest. It was as though the Valley were a sheet of
water straightway and the fiddler the dropping of a stone, for the
ripple of mischief started in every direction. It caught two
mountaineers on the edge of the crowd, who for no particular reason
thumped each other with their huge fists, and were swiftly led away by
that silent Guard. The operation of a mysterious force was in the air
and it puzzled the crowd. Somewhere a whistle would blow, and, from this
point and that, a quiet, well-dressed young man would start swiftly
toward it. The crowd got restless and uneasy, and, by and by,
experimental and defiant. For in that crowd was the spirit of Bunker
Hill and King's Mountain. It couldn't fiddle and sing; it couldn't
settle its little troubles after the good old fashion of fist and skull;
it couldn't charge up and down the streets on horseback if it pleased;
it couldn't ride over those puncheon sidewalks; it couldn't drink openly
and without shame; and, Shades of the American Eagle and the Stars and
Stripes, it couldn't even yell. No wonder, like the heathen, it raged.
What did these blanked "furriners" have against them anyhow? They
couldn't run _their_ country--not much.

Pretty soon there came a shrill whistle far down-town--then another and
another. It sounded ominous, indeed, and it was, being a signal of
distress from the Infant of the Guard, who stood before the door of Jack
Woods's saloon with his pistol levelled on Richards, the tough from the
Pocket, the Infant, standing there with blazing eyes, alone and in the
heart of a gathering storm.