"Ye come from over on Crippleshin?" The boy flashed the question with
a sudden hardening of the voice, and, when he was affirmatively
answered, his eyes contracted and bored searchingly into the stranger's
face.

"Where'd ye put up last night?"

"Red Bill Hollman's house, at the mouth of Meeting House Fork; do you
know the place?"

Samson's reply was curt.

"I knows hit all right."

There was a moment's pause--rather an awkward pause. Lescott's mind
began piecing together fragments of conversation he had heard, until he
had assembled a sort of mental jig-saw puzzle.

The South-Hollman feud had been mentioned by the more talkative of his
informers, and carefully tabooed by others--notable among them his host
of last night. It now dawned on him that he was crossing the boundary
and coming as the late guest of a Hollman to ask the hospitality of a
South.

"I didn't know whose house it was," he hastened to explain, "until I
was benighted, and asked for lodging. They were very kind to me. I'd
never seen them before. I'm a stranger hereabouts."

Samson only nodded. If the explanation failed to satisfy him, it at
least seemed to do so.