or would sit down to let his lean horse
rest, and would flip meaninglessly at
the bushes with a switch. Sometimes
his bushy head would droop over on
his breast, and he would snap it up
sharply and start painfully on. Robber,
cattle-thief, outlaw he might have
been in another century; for he filled
the figure of any robber hero in life
or romance, and yet he was only the
Senator from Bell, as he was known
in the little Kentucky capital; or, as
he was known in his mountain home,
just the Senator, who had toiled and
schemed and grown rich and grown poor;
who had suffered long and was kind.

Only that Christmas he had gutted
every store in town. ``Give me everything
you have, brother,'' he said, across
each counter; and next day every man,
woman, and child in the mountain
town had a present from the Senator's
hands. He looked like a brigand that
day, as he looked now, but he called
every man his brother, and his eye,
while black and lustreless as night, was
as brooding and just as kind.

When the boom went down, with it