CHAPTER VIIMYSTERIOUS FOOTSTEPS

At that instant there flashed before her mind a picture of a face in a square of light, an ugly face with bushy eyebrows, unshaven cheeks and beady eyes—the face of the strange man she had seen at the cabin window.

Scarcely a moment had elapsed after Hallie’s last scream when she sprang sobbing into Marion’s arms. Without a question regarding the cause of her fright, the older girl gathered her up and went racing down the mountain. It was a headlong flight. Now they were in danger of a plunge down the steep slope, and now, having stepped upon a round pebble, Marion rolled twice her length to land against a stout sapling that saved them from dashing over a cliff. Yet, somehow, at last they found themselves safe in Marion’s room, seated by the fire, with the door securely bolted behind them. Then, and only then, did Hallie cease her sobbing to sit staring round-eyed at the fire.

“What frightened you?” Marion asked.

“A man,” the little girl shuddered.

“Did he try to catch you?” Marion was eager now. She was sure she could describe that man.

“No. He only stood and stared at me.”

“Then why were you afraid?”

“He was a very ugly man, and—and it seemed like I had seen him before in—in—” she hesitated, “maybe in a bad dream.”

“Oh!” Marion was excited. Perhaps here was a clue to the little girl’s lost identity. Perhaps she had seen the man before in that other life lived before the blow on her head.

“If only I could find that man, perhaps he could tell me,” she told herself. Yet she knew right well that nothing could induce her to return to the mountain that night to search for him.

“Did he say anything?” she asked after a moment’s silence.

“Yes,” the little girl spoke quickly. “He said: ‘Hit’s her. Hit shorely are’!”

Marion started. What further proof did she need that this was the man she had seen peering in at their window? One more thing was certain, too; it had been the little lost girl he had thought of when he said, “Hit’s her.”

At the fireside council that night all the events of the day were discussed. Mrs. McAlpin approved to the fullest extent the girls’ resolve to make a stand in the interest of the mountain children and to do all in their power to elect a school trustee who had the children’s interest at heart. She would do all within her power to help win the election.

In regard to the mysterious man and little Hallie, it was decided that should the man be seen again, every effort would be made to obtain information from him regarding the identity of the child.

“In the meantime,” said Mrs. McAlpin, “we must keep an eye on the child every moment. It is one thing to find her parents, quite another to have her spirited away by one who may have no claim whatever upon her. At school, at home, at work, at play, she must be carefully guarded.”

With this the council broke up and a few moments later Marion found herself beneath the homespun coverlids, staring up at the brown beams and dreaming that they were being slowly transformed into shining trenches filled with Confederate gold.

Black Blevens was not long in carrying his election war into every quarter. The summer school at once became a center of fire. At this time the free summer school was more than half over and, though neither Florence nor Marion had taught in day school before, they had met with singular success. They had found these young feud fighters regular storehouses of explosives, but once the children came to know that their teacher meant to deal justly with them and that they had a deep and abiding love for them, they had settled down to hard study in a way quite remarkable.

Now, on the Monday after the election struggle had been determined upon, there came a new pupil to the school. With two battered books and a half of a tablet under his arm, he marched to the teacher’s desk and announced his intentions of going to school.

His manner was meek enough to disarm the most wary of teachers. He was sixteen. He was not badly dressed and an attempt had been made to comb his unruly locks. Only in his restless blue eyes did there lurk a warning signal of danger.

Florence’s lips trembled ever so slightly as she asked his name.

“Bud,” was the answer.

“Bud for Buddington, I suppose?”

“No’m, jest Bud.”

“All right, Bud,” Florence’s smile was a doubtful one. She was beginning to suspect the truth.

“Bud Wax,” the boy added reluctantly.

Florence started. She had feared this. Bud Wax, known as the most troublesome boy on Laurel Branch, a boy who had been known to ride through the settlement at midnight shouting like a wild Indian and firing his pistol in air. And worst of all, he was a distant relative of Black Blevens and lived at his cabin.

What could be the answer? There could be but one; he had been sent to make trouble. If Black Blevens could break up the summer school he could all the more easily convince doubtful voters that these girls from the outside were unqualified to handle the school.

For a moment she wavered. She could refuse to admit him. The control of the summer school was in her hands. Yet there was no real reason to offer. Bud was larger and older than most of the other children, yet there were a few older than he.

“And besides,” she told herself as she set her lips tight, “to refuse to admit him is to surrender without a battle. I won’t surrender.”

All this thinking took but a half dozen seconds. At the end of that time she favored the boy with her very best smile and said:

“All right, Bud, you may have the seat by the back window on the right side.”

For a moment the boy stared at her in silence. A seat by a back window is at once a much coveted place and a spot quite advantageous for mischief making. Bud knew this; yet this girl teacher gave him this place. Just what his conclusions were regarding this move Florence could not even guess.

Every hour of that day seemed the hour before a thunder storm. Every child in the room knew why Bud was there; and while as a whole they were friendly to their teachers, they were at the same time normal children. And where is the child who does not long for excitement.

The day passed as others had. The slow drone of bees outside, the murmur of voices reciting lessons, loud shouts of play at noon and recess, then the glad burst of joy as the sixty children went racing home.

“Bud was just like the rest,” Florence said to Ransom Turner that evening. “Perhaps there’s nothing wrong after all.”

“Just you wait!” Ransom said with a shake of his head. “Old Black Blevens ain’t sendin’ that boy to school fer book larnin’. Hit’s time for layin’ by of the corn. Took him right outen’ the field, he did. Don’t make sense, that ar don’t, unless he hopes Bud’ll make trouble.”

Florence went to bed with a headache. Doubtless Ransom was right. She was tempted to wish that they had never started the fight, that they had left Black Blevens and Al Finley to collect their ill gotten school money.

“And the children without an education!” she whispered fiercely. “No! Never! Never! We’ll fight, and by all that’s good, we’ll win!”

A whole week passed and nothing unusual happened. If Bud Wax and Black Blevens meant any harm they were taking a long time to tamp powder and lay fuse. All Ransom would say was:

“Jest you mind what I say. That Black Blevens is a plumb quare worker, but he’s always at hit.”

Two little rumors came to Florence. A small child had told her that Bud carried his pistol to school. An older boy had said that Bud was trying to pick a quarrel with Ballard Skidmore. Ballard was larger and older than Bud, a big, slow-going, red-headed fellow who somehow reminded Florence of a St. Bernard dog. She put little faith in either of these rumors, and as for picking a quarrel with this slow-going fellow, she did not believe it could be done.

On Saturday something vaguely disturbing occurred. There were many squirrels on the upper slopes of Little Black Mountain. Ralph had taught Florence how to shoot with his long barreled .22 pistol. She decided to try her hand at hunting. Had it not been Marion’s day for helping with the work she would have asked her to go along. As it was, she struck away alone over the tortuous cow path that led to the upper reaches of the mountain.

Having donned a pair of canvas knickers, high boots and an old hunting coat, she was prepared for a free, rough time of it. Free and rough it was, too. Brambles tore at her, rocks slid from beneath her feet to send her sprawling, a rotten tree trunk over which she was climbing suddenly caved in and threatened to send her rolling down the mountain. She enjoyed it all. A typical American girl, strong and brave, born for the out-of-doors, she took the buffets of nature and laughed in its face.

As she reached a higher elevation the slope became gentler. Here she found an abundance of beach and chestnut trees, and higher up a grove of walnut.

Hardly had she reached the edge of the walnut grove when she caught a flash of red, then a scolding chatter from a tall tree.

“A squirrel,” she breathed as she silently lifted the hammer of her long pistol. “I wonder—I just wonder—”

Her wonderings were cut short by a sudden thud close by, then another. Two frisking squirrels had come to the ground within a dozen paces of her. Like a flash of light they were away over the moss and up another tree. This tree was not large and the leaves were scanty. On tip-toe she stalked it.

Gazing intently upward, she discovered a pair of small black eyes looking down at her.

“There’s one.”

She lifted the shiny barrel, but at that instant the eyes vanished.

Off to the right she caught a chatter. Then, just as she went tip-toeing away, a half-grown walnut dropped at her feet. She picked it up. The shell had been half eaten away.

“You saucy things!” she exclaimed, shaking her fist in mock anger at the frolickers.

With eyes wandering everywhere, tip-toeing, listening, pausing for a moment to start quickly away, she at last crossed over into a grove of chestnuts.

All this time the inside of her pistol’s barrel remained as shiny as when she started. Always, as she prepared to shoot, she caught a shrill chatter or saw the flash of a bushy tail. It was great fun, so she went on with it until at last, quite tired out, she flung herself down beneath a great chestnut tree to half bury herself in green and gray moss as soft as a velvet cushion. There, flat on her back, breathing the fresh mountain air, listening to the songs of forest birds far and near, catching the distant melodious tink-tank of cow bells, squinting at the flash of sunlight as it played among the leaves, she at last drifted off into a dreamy sleep.

She did not sleep long, but when she awoke she was conscious of some living creature near her. Then she heard a thump-thump among the leaves, followed by a scratching sound. Without the least sound, she moved her head from side to side. Then she saw him, an inquisitive red squirrel. He was sitting on a stump, not ten feet away, staring at her. Instantly her hand was on her pistol, but she did not lift it. Instead, she rolled over and lifted up her head to look again.

The squirrel had retreated a little, but had mounted another stump for a second look.

“How easy!” she thought, silently gripping her pistol.

There came a rustle from the right, then one at the left. The ground was alive with squirrels who had made a party of it and had come for a look at this sleeping nymph of the woods. She caught the gleam of their peering eyes from leaf pile, low bush, stump and fallen trees.

“No!” she whispered at last. “I couldn’t kill one of you. Not one. But it’s been heaps of fun to hunt you.”

At that she sat up and began shaking the dead leaves from her hair. Instantly her furry visitors vanished.

But what was that? She caught a sound of heavier movements in the leaves.

Instantly she was on her knees, peering through the bushes. What could it have been? Surely not a squirrel. Too heavy for that. There it was again! Rustle! Rustle! Rustle!

Then again there was silence, a silence that was frightening. The girl felt the hair rising at the back of her neck. She was alone on the mountain. Was it a bear? There were bears on the mountain. Was it a man? An enemy?

As she glanced about she realized with a little burst of fright that, like sparrows at sight of a hawk, the squirrels had vanished. This indeed was an ominous token.

Springing to her feet, she thrust her long barreled pistol into an inside pocket of her jacket, where it could be snatched out at a moment’s notice. Yet, even as she did this, she realized how absurd a weapon is a long barrelled .22 when one faces real danger.

For a moment, standing like a wild deer, poised on tip-toe ready for instant flight, she stood there listening. All she heard was the wild beating of her own heart and the faint tink-tank of cow bells in the valley below.

The sound of these bells increased her fear. Their very faintness told her the distance she had wandered away over the mountain.

The next moment, walking on tip-toe, scarcely breathing, with her pistol snugly hidden in her coat, she was making good her retreat.

It was not until Monday morning that the real truth of this mountain experience came to her. Then it came with a suddenness and force that was strong enough to bowl over even a man of strong heart.

She was on her way to school when Ransom Turner, having called her into the store and closed the door, said in a low husky tone that told her of deep feeling:

“There’s a warrant out for your arrest, but don’t you care narry bit!”

“For my arrest?” Florence stared. “What have I done?”

“Hit’s for carryin’ concealed weapons, a pistol gun, I reckon.”

“Why, I never—”

The girl paused and caught her breath. It all came to her like a flash. Those stealthy movements on the mountain had been made by some of Black Blevens’ men. They had been spying on her. She blushed as she realized that they might have seen her sleeping there in the leaves. But her face was flushed with anger as she realized that, having seen her pocket that all but harmless pistol, they had taken a mean advantage and had sworn out a warrant for her arrest.

“Don’t you keer,” said the little mountain man, putting a hand on her arm. “Don’t you keer narry bit. This store’s mine, an’ all them goods. I’ll mortgage hit all to go your bond. You go right on teaching your school. We’ll take keer of old Black Blevens and all them of his sort.”

Quick tears blinded her, but she brushed them away. It was hard to be treated as a criminal in a strange land and by the very people you were trying to help.

Quickly, instead of tears, there was a gleam of battle in her eyes.

“We’ll beat it!” said Ransom, clinching his fists hard. “Down here in the mountings law’s a club to beat your enemies with. Hit’s quare, but hit’s true. We’ll git a lawyer from the court house. We’ll beat old Black Blevens, just you wait and see!”

Three times more that morning Florence was reduced to tears by rough-clad, shuffling mountaineers who came to knock timidly at the schoolhouse door and to assure her that they had heard of her plight and were ready to go her bail and to help in any way. “If hit takes the roof off from over my ole woman an’ the last hog shoat I got runnin’ in the branch,” as one of them expressed it.

It is always good to know that one has friends, and when one is among comparative strangers it is gratifying indeed.

And yet, as the day came to an end and the sudden mountain darkness fell, it found Florence with a heavy heart. To be tried by a Justice of the Peace for a crime, this was a cross indeed.

“Tried by a Justice,” she thought to herself. “Who is the Justice? Pellage Skidmore! One of Black Blevens’ henchmen! It’s a plot. They’ll fine me and let me go; perhaps give me ten days in the county jail. Ten days in that place!” Her heart stopped beating. She had seen that jail—a dark and dirty place full of vermin.

“Oh, I couldn’t!” she breathed.

Then of a sudden a new thought came to her. The least fine that could be imposed was twenty-five dollars; one of the men had told her that.

“In the Constitution of the United States,” she whispered to herself, “it says that in trials over matters amounting to twenty-five dollars, or over, the defendant may call for a jury. I’ll call for one. If I must have a trial, I’ll have a real one!”

At that she stamped the ground with her foot and felt immensely relieved. There is a great comfort to be had sometimes when one has something to say about his own hanging.

Troubles never come singly. Florence’s second shock came close on the heels of the first. Having decided to make the best of a bad situation and to allow her friends and fellow clansmen to arrange the legal battle over her trial for carrying a concealed weapon, she went to her work next day with a brave heart.

With all her strong resolves, the look on the faces of her smaller charges came near melting her to tears. All knew of the impending trial. A few greeted her with a glassy stare. These were children of her enemies. For the most part they looked at her with such a sad and sorrowful longing as one might expect to find on the face of a mother whose son has been ordered shot.

“Surely,” Marion said to her, “being tried by a jury in the mountains must be a solemn affair.”

“It is,” said Florence, swallowing hard, “and Ransom Turner told me last night this was the first time in the history of the mountains that a woman has been tried for carrying concealed weapons.”

“It will be a great occasion!” Marion could see the humor of the situation. “When is it to come off?”

“Ransom says that the judge has set the trial a week from next Monday.”

“That’s school election day. All Laurel Branch will be there!”

“Let them come!” said Florence, a gleam of fire in her eye. “I haven’t done anything to be ashamed of! They want a fight. We’ll give them one—a battle royal! They’ve already lost one point; they must give me a jury. We’ll make them lose some more. I shouldn’t wonder if the tide would turn and the power that is higher than I would turn this bit of meanness and trickery to our advantage.”

The forenoon of that day passed much as had the earlier hours of other days—study and lessons, recess, then again the droning of voices blended with the lazy buzzing of flies and the distant songs of birds.

In spite of the quiet smoothness of the passing hours, there was in the air that ominous tenseness which one feels but cannot explain.

This was heightened fourfold by a strange occurrence. Just as Florence was about to ring the bell after the noon hour, Marion drew her to a gaping window that looked out on the upper landscape and pointed with a trembling finger to a solitary figure perched atop a giant sandstone rock that lay in the center of a deserted clearing a few hundred yards above the schoolhouse.

The figure was that of a mountaineer. At that distance it would have been difficult to have told whether he was young or old. Something about the way he sat slouching over the rifle that lay across his lap reminded Florence of Black Blevens. An involuntary shudder shook her.

“On Lookout Rock!” she breathed.

The story of that rock they knew too well. In earlier days, when a deadly feud was raging up and down the creek, this rock had been the lookout for Black Blevens’ clan. There, on top of the rock, with rifle at his side, a clansman would watch the movements of his enemy. Smoke curling from a distant chimney, a woman hoeing corn in the field, the distant boom of a rifle, all were signs that he read and passed on by signals to his distant clansmen.

“There hasn’t been a watcher on that rock for years, they say,” said Florence. Her teeth were fairly chattering.

“See! He’s looking this way. Seems that he must be expecting something to happen.”

“Wha—what could it be?”

Florence stood trembling, all unnerved for one instant. Then, having shaken herself as one will to awaken from an unpleasant dream, she became her brave self again.

It was well she regained her courage. Fifteen minutes later, while Marion was outside beneath a great beech tree, hearing a lesson, Florence sat watching over a study hour. On hearing a sound of commotion she looked up quickly to see her fifty children running for doors and windows. In the back of the room Bud Wax and Ballard Skidmore stood glaring at each other and reaching for their hip pockets.

One instant the teacher’s head whirled. The next that dread rumor sped through her brain: “Bud has been carrying his pistol gun to school.”

Then, like a powerful mechanical thing, she went into action. One instant she had leaped from the platform; the next found her half way down the aisle. Before the slow muscles of Bud’s arm had carried a hand to his pocket, he felt both wrists held in a vice-like grip and a voice that was strange, even to the speaker herself, said:

“Ballard Skidmore, leave the room. All the rest of you take your seats.”

Had Bud Wax possessed the will power to struggle, he would have found himself powerless in this girl’s grasp. Nature had endowed her with a magnificent physique. She had neither neglected it nor abused it. Gym, when there was gym, hiking, climbing, rowing, riding, had served to keep her fit for this moment.

As Bud sank weakly to his seat he felt something slide from his pocket.

“My pistol gun,” his paralized mind registered weakly. The next moment he saw the teacher gripping the butt of that magnificent thing of black rubber and blue steel and marching toward the front of the room.

“James Jordon,” she said as she tried to still the wild beating of her heart, “go bring me two sandstones as large as your head.”

“Yes, mam.” James went out trembling.

Florence calmly tilted out the cylinder of the gun and allowed the cartridges to fall out. After that she stood with the weapon dangling in her hand.

When the rocks had been placed on her desk she laid the pistol on the flattest one, then lifted the other for a blow.

She did not look at Bud. She dared not. When a small child she had possessed a doll that was all her own. A ruthless hand had broken the doll’s head. No doll ever meant more to a girl than his first gun meant to a mountain boy.

Without looking, she felt the agony on the boy’s face as the stone descended. Without listening she heard him crumple in his seat as the rubber grip broke, springs flew and the barrel bent.

When there remained only an unrecognizable mass of broken and twisted steel, she walked slowly to the open window and dropped it out. Turning, she looked them all squarely in the eye (all but Bud, whose face was down on his desk) and said in her ordinary tune of voice:

“You may resume your lessons.”

In one corner a fly, caught in a spider’s web, droned complainingly. From a nearby bush there came the liquid notes of a wild canary, while faint and from far away there came the low of a cow. Save for the occasional swish of a turned page, no other sound disturbed the Sabbath-like stillness of the school room. And, as Florence’s glance strayed to the hillside and sentinal rock, she saw that the silent watcher was gone.

Had Florence been able to open the book of the future and to read there an account of the far reaching events that were to come out of the moments that had just passed, she would have been surprised and startled. As she could not, she could only wonder, and in her heart there was a feeling of dread.

The hours that followed were filled with a strange, subdued silence. The careless rustle of pages was gone. Gone, too, was the uneasy shuffle of feet on the plain board floor. Children recited in tones little above a whisper. It was as if the room were empty; no children there. And yet, there they were. Florence saw them with her eyes, but when she closed her eyes she was subject to an illusion, a feeling that they had vanished.

When the last long hours had dragged its way to a weary end, the children crept silently away. On the soft soil their bare feet made no sound, and from their lips there came never a whisper.

Bud Wax was the last to leave and looking neither to right nor left, with his head upon his breast he disappeared at once in the shadows of a paw-paw thicket.

Marion had gone ahead with some of the younger children to help them across the river.

Florence remained behind. As the last child disappeared from sight, she left the schoolhouse to strike off up the leafy bank and on up the hillside until, quite out of breath from climbing, she threw herself upon a soft bed of ferns to bury her face in her hands and burst out crying.

As she lay there pressing her throbbing temples, it seemed to her that all worth while things in the world had passed away. Being only a girl, she could not fathom the depth of emotion nor measure the flood tide of bitterness that flowed over her soul. She only knew that at last memory came to her rescue, the memory of an old, old story in the Bible of a man who, having won a marvelous victory over great odds, had gone far away into the wilderness to at last throw himself prostrate upon the ground and ask that he might die.

As the girl recalled the story she felt that she had much in common with this old prophet of Israel. The enemy of her school had tried to destroy it. She had defeated his end. How long she would remain victor she could not tell. She only knew that to-day she had won.

“And to-day,” she assured herself stoutly, “is enough. Let to-morrow care for itself.”

Then of a sudden she recalled a promise. She had told Jensie Crider, one of her most promising pupils, that she would come to her house and stay the night. She must be away at once.

An hour later found her on the shake roofed porch of a two room cabin far up on the side of Big Black Mountain. The light faded from the tallest, most distant peak as her tiny young hostess bade her shy welcome.

To one accustomed, as Florence was, to the homes of rich and fertile valleys, this mountain cabin seemed strangely meager. Two rooms, two beds, a table of pine boards, a fireplace hung with rows of red peppers and braids of onions, three splint bottomed chairs, a pile of home woven coverlids in the corner, a box cupboard nailed to the wall, a few dishes in the cupboard, that was all.

And yet it was scrupulously clean. The hearth had been brushed, the floor scrubbed and sanded, the coverlids on the beds were spotless and the few cheap stone dishes shone like imported china.

“It’s something that people from the outside don’t realize,” Florence told herself. “Many of these mountain folks, living here shut off from the world, with few tools and many difficulties, would put to shame many of those whose opportunities have been great. Surely their children should have a chance! And they shall!” She clenched her hands tight as this thought passed through her mind. She was thinking of the coming school election and of the things they would do if they won.

“If we win?” she whispered. “We will win! We will!”

One incident of the evening in that cabin remained long in her memory. They were at supper. Since there were but four plates and four chairs, the two younger children must wait while Jensie ate with her teacher and the father and mother.

The meal was simple enough—corn bread baked on the hearth, fried string beans, a glass of wild cherry jelly and a plain cake with very little sugar. The luxury of the meal was a plate of boiled eggs. On the rich, broad-sweeping prairies, or in cities, one thinks of eggs as staple food. In the mountains they are hoarded as a golden treasure, to be traded at the store for calico, shoes, and other necessities of life.

But this night, in honor of the guest, Jensie had served six shining white eggs. Florence saw the faces of the children glow with anticipation.

“Probably haven’t had eggs for months,” was her mental comment.

As she took her egg and cut it in two with her knife, it was like the breaking of bread in sacrament.

As the meal was eaten she watched the eager eyes of the two waiting children. Then, of a sudden, in the eyes of those little ones, a near tragedy occurred.

“Have another egg,” said the hostess to Florence, passing the plate as she did so.

Without thinking, she put out a hand to take one. Then, of a sudden, the youngest child threw herself flat on the floor while her little form shook with silent sobbing.

“No, I don’t think I care for another,” Florence said quickly, drawing back her hand just in time.

At once, with face wreathed in smiles, the little one was on her feet.

“They do this for me,” thought Florence, swallowing hard. “What must I not do for them?”

Nine o’clock found Florence safely tucked away in the bed which occupied a corner of the small living room. In the kitchen-living room slept her host and his good wife, while from above her there came an occasional rustle or thump that told plainer than words that the three children, having given up their bed to the teacher, had gone to sleep on the floor of the attic. Here was one more token of the unusual hospitality of these kindly mountain people.

The ceiling, at which the girl lay staring with sleepless eyes, was strange indeed. In some way Jeff Crider had obtained enough mill sawed boards to cover the rough hewn beams. Some way, too, he had obtained enough paint to cover the boards. Then, that he might produce a decorative effect, before the paint was dry he had held a smoking, globeless kerosene lamp close to the paint, and, moving about in ever widening circles, had painted there black roads that led round and round in endless ways to nowhere.

As the girl stared at this fantastic ceiling it seemed to her that these tracings should mean something, that they led to an important truth, a truth that she should know, and one of vast importance.

Then of a sudden it struck her all of a heap. This cabin had an attic. Mrs. McAlpin’s whipsawed cabin must have one, too. There was no entrance from below. She was sure of that, but the attic was there all the same.

“Confederate gold,” she whispered. “It must be hidden there.”

So intense were her convictions on this subject that she found herself unable to sleep.

At last, having wrapped a homespun blanket about her, she stepped into the crisp air of the night.

The moon was just rising over Big Black Mountain. It was lighting up the scenes of another entrancing mystery, which Florence had stumbled upon a few days before.

“Who lives at the head of Laurel Branch?” she had asked Ransom Turner.

“I don’t rightly know.”

“Don’t know!” she exclaimed.

“I reckon there ain’t nobody that rightly knows except them that lives there.”

“But—but where did they come from?”

“Peers like there don’t nobody rightly know.”

“How very strange!” she had exclaimed. “When did they come?”

“Mebby two years back. Came from somewhere away over back of Pine Mounting. Quarest people you most ever seed. One man half as big as a mounting, and no arm except one. Mighty onfriendly folks. Coupla men who went up thar huntin’ got scared off. Quarest folks you most ever seed.”

“Perhaps that’s where little Hallie came from.”

“Might be. But if I was you I’d never go near thar.”

Ransom had gone on to tell weird tales of these strange people, a dozen families in all who had leased land from a coal company and had gone up there beyond a natural stone gateway which appeared to shut them from the rest of the world. He had told how they had stayed there, never coming down to the settlements for barter and trade, and how they kept other mountain people away.

Other tales he had told, too; tales that had made her blood run cold. There was the story of a peddler with a pack who had gone up there at nightfall and had never been seen to return, and a one-armed fiddler who had never come back.

“But couldn’t they have gone out some other way?” she had asked.

“Narry a pass at the head of this branch, narry a one. Jest rocky ridges, so steep an’ high that if you was to drop your hat from the top it would blow back up to you. No, Miss,” he had added with a shake of his head, “don’t you never go up thar!”

And yet she had somehow felt that she must and would go through the natural gateway to the little known valley of mystery.

Now, as she stood looking at the moon that shone down upon it all, she felt the lure stronger than ever.

“Some day,” she whispered, “I will go up there. I feel sure that I must.”

Little did she dream, as she stood there until the chill night air drove her inside, that in less than a week up there at the head of Laurel Branch she was to enter upon the strangest, most mysterious adventure of her young life.

Before she fell asleep she wondered a little about the strange experiences that had come to her on Ages Creek. Would she ever know why they had made her prisoner there? When would the title be proved up on the Powell coal tract? Would it ever be? Would they get the commission?

“Uncle Billie, has the whipsawed house an attic?”

Florence asked the question eagerly as she met her venerable friend on the creek road next day.

“Sure enough! Now has it? I most forgit.” The old man scratched his head.

“It hasn’t a stairway, nor an opening for a ladder, but there must be space up there, and if there’s space there must be something there.”

“Shore there are. Cobwebs, dust, an’—an’” the old man, startled with a sudden thought, almost lost his balance and fell over, “an’ of course that ar Confederate gold. Shore enough. Whar else could it be?”

“You come over at five this afternoon and we’ll explore that place,” smiled Florence. “That is, if Mrs. McAlpin will permit us.”

“I’ll shore be thar at the apinted hour—sun time,” Uncle Billie beamed like an excited child.

“Plum quare gold it were,” he added as Florence hurried away to school.

At sight of the old log schoolhouse, all thoughts of the fabled gold were driven from her mind. The responsibilities of the day came flooding in upon her. What had been the results of yesterday’s affair? She had asked Marion to visit Ballard Skidmore in his home and get his story of the quarrel with Bud Wax. She did not doubt but that Bud had been entirely in the wrong, and hoped Ballard would return to school. Bud, of course, she would never see in her school room again. Somewhat to her surprise, she found herself regretting this. There was much good in the boy. She had grown rather fond of the sight of his restless blue eyes.

“If only he did not belong, body and soul, to Black Blevens,” she told herself, “one might make something of him.”

Again her mind went to work on the problems directly before her. How had Black Blevens taken the affair yesterday? Had he been the silent watcher on Lookout Rock? What had this setting of a watch meant? What would his next move be?

And what of the coming election? Would there be enough voters to enable them to win? Ransom Turner had promised to make a canvas of the community and tell her how matters stood.

Her trial? Her heart sank at thought of it! To be tried by a jury with all the mountain people looking on!

“But it’s all for them, for the little ones,” she whispered, and was comforted.

Imagine her surprise when, upon entering the school yard, she saw Bud Wax with the larger boys, pitching rocks at a stump.

“I—I didn’t think he’d come back,” she whispered to Marion.

“Neither did I.”

“Is Ballard coming back?”

“Yes.”

“Will they fight again?” Florence’s heart was in her throat. She felt that another day such as yesterday would prove her undoing.

“Ballard said he’d do his best. Bud had been teasing him for a long time. He called him a name that no mountain man or boy will allow himself to be called. Then Ballard struck him in the face.”

For a time Florence pondered the problem of further punishment for Bud. In the end she concluded that any punishment after the destruction of his pistol would be anticlimax.

“We’ll let bygones be bygones,” she told Marion. “But keep your eyes open for further trouble. Why did he come back anyway?”

“Who knows?”

That day Bud was a model pupil. Quiet, far too quiet for comfort, he studied hard and recited perfectly. The day passed as a model in the history of the school. Florence went home more puzzled than ever. On the doorstep of the whipsawed house she found Uncle Billie Gibson. He was smiling his brightest smile and glancing up at the eaves as if he expected a shower of gold to come rattling down from the shingles.

A moment later two breathless young ladies were eagerly begging Mrs. McAlpin for permission to remove a board from the ceiling of their room that they might explore the attic of that venerable house.

Consent of the good lady was readily obtained and in a twinkle, armed with a wood chisel and hammer, they were at the job.

Have you never entered an old house whose attic has remained unexplored for years? Then you have never enjoyed the exciting dreams that come with thoughts of treasures that may be found there. Chests filled with curios from many lands; ancient trunks packed with rare old laces; a grandfather’s clock; rare old books worth a fortune; period furniture that a millionaire might covet. Indeed, who knows what rare treasures may be hidden there?

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