to put an end to that some day himself. He knew what was waiting
for him on the other side of the spur, and when he reached the
top, he sat down for a moment on a long-fallen, moss-grown log.
Above him beetled the top of his world. His great blue misty hills
washed their turbulent waves to the yellow shore of the dropping
sun. Those waves of forests primeval were his, and the green spray
of them was tossed into cloudland to catch the blessed rain. In
every little fold of them drops were trickling down now to water
the earth and give back the sea its own. The dreamy-eyed man of
science had told him that. And it was unchanged, all unchanged
since wild beasts were the only tenants, since wild Indians
slipped through the wilderness aisles, since the half-wild white
man, hot on the chase, planted his feet in the footsteps of both
and inexorably pushed them on. The boy's first Kentucky ancestor
had been one of those who had stopped in the hills. His rifle had
fed him and his family; his axe had put a roof over their heads,
and the loom and spinning-wheel had clothed their bodies. Day by
day they had fought back the wilderness, had husbanded the soil,
and as far as his eagle eye could reach, that first Hawn had
claimed mountain, river, and tree for his own, and there was none
to dispute the claim for the passing of half a century. Now those
who had passed on were coming back again--the first trespasser
long, long ago with a yellow document that he called a "blanket-
patent" and which was all but the bringer's funeral shroud, for
the old hunter started at once for his gun and the stranger with
his patent took to flight. Years later a band of young men with
chain and compass had appeared in the hills and disappeared as
suddenly, and later still another band, running a line for a
railroad up the river, found old Jason at the foot of a certain
oak with his rifle in the hollow of his arm and marking a dead-