The lad's mind was made up now. He put the old nag in a lope down
the rocky creek. He did not even go to his grandfather's for
dinner, but turned at the river in a gallop for town. The rock-
pecker, and even Mavis, were gone from his mind, and the money in
his pocket was going, not for love or learning, but for pistol and
cartridge now.




IX

September in the Blue-grass. The earth cooling from the summer's
heat, the nights vigorous and chill, the fields greening with a
second spring. Skies long, low, hazy, and gently arched over
rolling field and meadow and woodland. The trees gray with the
dust that had sifted all summer long from the limestone turnpikes.
The streams shrunken to rivulets that trickled through crevices
between broad flat stones and oozed through beds of water-cress
and crow-foot, horse-mint and pickerel-weed, the wells low,
cisterns empty, and recourse for water to barrels and the sunken
ponds. The farmers cutting corn, still green, for stock, and
ploughing ragweed strongholds for the sowing of wheat. The hemp an
Indian village of gray wigwams. And a time of weeds--indeed the
heyday of weeds of every kind, and the harvest time for the king
weed of them all. Everywhere his yellow robes were hanging to
poles and drying in the warm sun. Everywhere led the conquering
war trail of the unkingly usurper, everywhere in his wake was
devastation. The iron-weed had given up his purple crown, and