surrendered meekly enough to the quick clasp of her little fingers,
and--forgetting all the daring deeds that he meant to do--he was led
like any lamb up the hill to the open door of Cedar House.




II

THE HOUSE OF CEDAR


So far as they knew, there was no tie of blood or relationship binding
them to the kind people of Cedar House. Yet it was the only home that
they could remember and very dear to them both.

It was a great square of rough, dark logs, and seemed now, seen through
the uncertain light, to stand in the centre of a shadowy hamlet, so many
smaller cabins were clustered around it. The custom of the country was
to add cabin after cabin as the family outgrew the original log house.
The instinct of safety, the love of kindred, and the longing for society
in the perilous loneliness of the wilderness held these first
Kentuckians very close together. So that as their own villages thus grew
around them and only their own dwelt near them, they naturally became as
clannish as their descendants have been ever since.

The cabin nearest Cedar House contained two rooms, and was used by its
master, Judge Knox, for his own bedroom and law office. There was a
still larger cabin somewhat more distant from the main building, which
was intended for the use of his nephew, William Pressley, on the