"One day Lem sent word to my pappy to meet him without no weepons an'
shake han's an' make it up."

Her face took on a look of bitterness and hate which almost made her
hearer shiver, so foreign was it to the fresh, young brightness he had
watched till now.

"My daddy come, at th' ap'inted time," she went on slowly, "but dad--he
knowed Lem Lindsay, an' never for a minute trusted him. He ast a friend
of his, Ben Lorey, to be a hidden witness. Ben hid behind a rock to
watch. 'Twas right near here--just over thar." She pointed.

"Soon Lem, he come along, a-smilin' like a Judast, an', after some fine
speakin', as daddy offered him his hand, Lem whipped out a knife,
an'--an' struck it into my daddy's heart."

The girl's recital had been tense, dramatic, not because she had tried
or thought to make it so--she had never learned not to be genuine--but
because of the real and tragic drama in the tale she told, the
matter-of-course way in which she told it.

It made Layson shudder. What sort of people were these mountaineers who
went armed to friendly meetings and struck down the men whose hands they
offered to clasp? Where was the other man while his friend's enemy was
at this dreadful work?

"But Lorey," said her fascinated listener, "the man who was in hiding as
a witness, made him pay for his outrageous act!"