occurred that one day the two girls, on their way to the main street for
an hour's shopping at the Villa de Paris and Variety Store, were stopped
by Dick Mattingly a few yards from their house, with the remark that, as
the county election was then in progress, it would be advisable for
them to defer their intention for a few hours. As he did not deem it
necessary to add that two citizens, in the exercise of a freeman's
franchise, had been supplementing their ballots with bullets, in front
of an admiring crowd, they knew nothing of that accident that removed
from Devil's Ford an entertaining stranger, who had only the night
before partaken of their hospitality.

A week or two later, returning one morning from a stroll in the forest,
Christie and Jessie were waylaid by George Kearney and Fairfax, and,
under pretext of being shown a new and romantic trail, were diverted
from the regular path. This enabled Mattingly and Maryland Joe to cut
down the body of a man hanged by the Vigilance Committee a few hours
before on the regular trail, and to remonstrate with the committee
on the incompatibility of such exhibitions with a maidenly worship of
nature.

"With the whole county to hang a man in," expostulated Joe, "you might
keep clear of Carr's woods."

It is needless to add that the young girls never knew of this act of
violence, or the delicacy that kept them in ignorance of it. Mr. Carr
was too absorbed in business to give heed to what he looked upon as
a convulsion of society as natural as a geological upheaval, and too
prudent to provoke the criticism of his daughters by comment in their
presence.