is?"

"Tolliver--Judd Tolliver." Hale started.

"Not Devil Judd!"

"That's what some evil folks calls me." Again he spoke shortly.
The mountaineers do not like to talk about their feuds. Hale knew
this--and the subject was dropped. But he watched the huge
mountaineer with interest. There was no more famous character in
all those hills than the giant before him--yet his face was kind
and was good-humoured, but the nose and eyes were the beak and
eyes of some bird of prey. The little girl had disappeared for a
moment. She came back with a blue-backed spelling-book, a second
reader and a worn copy of "Mother Goose," and she opened first one
and then the other until the attention of the visitor was caught--
the black-haired youth watching her meanwhile with lowering brows.

"Where did you learn to read?" Hale asked. The old man answered:

"A preacher come by our house over on the Nawth Fork 'bout three
year ago, and afore I knowed it he made me promise to send her
sister Sally to some school up thar on the edge of the
settlements. And after she come home, Sal larned that little gal
to read and spell. Sal died 'bout a year ago."

Hale reached over and got the spelling-book, and the old man
grinned at the quick, unerring responses of the little girl, and
the engineer looked surprised. She read, too, with unusual
facility, and her pronunciation was very precise and not at all