hanging over his knees: his hoe forgotten. His feet were bare, and his
jeans breeches were supported by a single suspender strap. Pushed well
to the back of his head was a battered straw hat, of the sort rurally
known as the "ten-cent jimmy." Under its broken brim, a long lock of
black hair fell across his forehead. So much of his appearance was
typical of the Kentucky mountaineer. His face was strongly individual,
and belonged to no type. Black brows and lashes gave a distinctiveness
to gray eyes so clear as to be luminous. A high and splendidly molded
forehead and a squarely blocked chin were free of that degeneracy which
marks the wasting of an in-bred people. The nose was straight, and the
mouth firm yet mobile. It was the face of the instinctive philosopher,
tanned to a hickory brown. In a stature of medium size, there was still
a hint of power and catamount alertness. If his attitude was at the
moment indolent, it was such indolence as drowses between bursts of
white-hot activity; a fighting man's aversion to manual labor which,
like the hounds, harked back to other generations. Near-by, propped
against the rails, rested a repeating rifle, though the people would
have told you that the truce in the "South-Hollman war" had been
unbroken for two years, and that no clansman need in these halcyon days
go armed afield.




CHAPTER III


Sally clambered lightly over the fence, and started on the last stage
of her journey, the climb across the young corn rows. It was a field
stood on end, and the hoed ground was uneven; but with no seeming of