bridge where the ghost walks, and then up the shadowy sides of the mountain, where the ferns grow in sunless nooks, and where the deer-tongued laurel raises grotesque antlers above the azalias, their mingled bloom giving a fragrant pink to the far-reaching ranges that go away to the north, with its cool skies, and away to the south, where the horizon seems always bathed in mists that hold a charm in their changeful hues-mists ever alluring, ever suggestive of warm moons and the life of lotus-eaters. And over those peaks, from which they have vast views of either the storm-land or dream-land, live the mountain people, surrounded by the usual patches of corn or of buckwheat the lives that to the worldlings who have come in sight of them seem so uneventful and monotonous that the girl had voiced the sentiments of the majority when she declared them so commonplace that no thing of interest was ever likely to happen there.

CHAPTER II.

COMMENT AT THE CROSS-ROADS.

The group on the store porch, steeped in the content of tobacco and rumination, did not immediately recover its lapsed speech as the pair of strangers passed on down the road, and then:

"A likely bit, that roan she's a ridin'," commented one of the judges from the bench of steps.

"That's young Edson's," volunteered another, with an assumption of superior knowledge in his tone; "a new one, just sent here from Kentucky last week."

"Another one! Well, that young fellow 'll have enough to

stock the mountain ef he keeps on.

for their keepin'."

Must cost him some

"He'll wear them all out before he gets through with the work he's cut out for himself," decided the dignitary of the post, who had again betaken himself to his perch on the railings and the careful whittling of a stick. "I hear tell that he's to have trouble back at Dumphey's ef he claims that place as lan'lord. Dumphey says he'll fight."

Dumphey never paid taxes on the ground," said the storekeeper, joining them again at the door. "This young Edson is in the right in a law sense. The land belongs to the Edsons."

"Then why don't they come an' live on it?" queried a sandy-complexioned individual. "What right's a man to have so much land he don't know where it all lays?—that's what I want to know."

"That's so," conceded a black-and-tan specimen, with a molasses-jug and sack of corn-meal between his knees. "Ad's right; this here gobbling up of this here mountain land in big sections is just like them monopolists does with iron an' wheat an' things-just crowds a poor man to the wall; an' after awhile they'll grab all the land up here, an' then what sort o' show is the people to have that lives here? That's what's the matter!

"Old Donald Edson is not much of a monopolist," said the storekeeper, "when he has let that land lay there for everybody's use over thirty years now-paid the taxes while other folks cut the pick of the timber off it." There was an uneasy shifting of the molasses-jug and meal-sack at this speech, and the whittling knife was idle a moment. "I see they're all set against this young Don Edson, who has come out to look up their claims; but, gentlemen, I believe he's square. He wouldn't be old Donald's nephew

if he wasn't."

"Looks to me, Art Hubbard," said the quavering, highpitched voice of an old weather-beaten man who smoked on the door-step, "that yer a layin' yerself out as an ad-vocate o' the Edsons these days, an' ye'll find work to yer hand ef ye do. I'm a talkin' now!"

Some of the others nodded an appreciation of the patriarch's speech, which tickled the giver of it until he broke into a shrill, tantalizing attempt at a laugh, which ended in broken, maudlin repetitions of the fact that "he was talkin' now."

"All right, Pap," said Mr. Hubbard, easily, as if caring little for contrary opinion; "talk away, and think as you like. The old man has given a dozen families free rent of the land for years; but there's no reason why he must keep on doing it."

There was silence among the "angels" for the space of a minute or so; evidently that view of the question had not been presented to them before, and it was weighty enough to require study and deliberation. Then the black-and-tan man treated himself to a fresh chew of "dog-leg," and said: "Well, taxes or no taxes, young Edson's a hard case, anyway."

"Shucks!" ventured one of the skeptical.

"I heard tell it, just the same," he insisted. "I did that!" "Now who told it?" demanded the whittler from his perch. "He ain't none too welcome in these parts, but no one reckons him anything of a tough."

'May be there's hard cases who ain't toughs,” decided this nice definer of terms. "Big-bugs, ye know, that are fine gentlemen; they'll gamble an' race, an' beat the d-l for girls an' whisky, but they're all so fine an' so high an' mighty about it that ye never think o' callin' them tough, as ye would a poor man; an' that's jest about the size o' this Mr. Don Edson."

"That's all easy enough to say," remarked Hubbard. "We can hear ducks, too."

"Well, this ain't no duck quackin', Mister Hubbard," said the black-and-tan, pushing a droopy, wide hat to the back of his head. "I got it for facts from the man-his name is Phipps-that old Donald Edson sent out with that batch of horses, before the young fellow come at all. He said the young fellow had been a livin' too high for the old man this winter. They had a sort o' quarrel about some debts o' gamblin' or somethin', an' then they patched up a peace if young Don 'ud come out to the mountains for a year, an' look up their land an' try an' manage it; and from what I heard, the old man's nephew ain't anything of a saint."

The old patriarch on the door-step mumbled delightedly his own knowledge of young blood and its tendencies, and would have drifted into reminiscence had not the storekeeper interrupted him.

"Well, there are some mighty nice people come out here just on Edson's account-that young lady we just saw, and her father, who they say is writing a book about these old Indian forts about here; then there is his sister, an oldish lady; and they all think a heap of young Edson, so he can't be such a very bad one."

"Well, I guess they're sort o' relations, and so hang together," decided the sandy man.

"Folks are troopin' up to the mountain mighty early this year," remarked the man of the molasses-jug, who evidently had a knack of gathering news, for he added: "Say, have any o' you folks heard the latest from the rock ledge?"

"Naw; what's up with them now?

"Le Fevre's wife has come back to him."

"Who said that?"

It was the man who had taken off the horseshoe who asked the question. He had joined them unnoticed, taking no part in their conversation until now; but his ears had evidently been open all the time, and his eyes assuredly were as they bent their compelling scrutiny on the informant.

"I heard Jim Stone tell it over at Hackett's frolic last night," he answered. "Dick went over into Virginia after her, I guess; anyway, she's back at the house."

"Thought Dick said she shouldn't come back,” said the sandy man.

"Naw, 'twasn't Dick," contested the autocrat on the railing; "it was that hell-pet of a granny o' his; leastwise, it was her I heard tell of sayin' of it."

"Well, Dick's just onery an' cussed enough to say it, too -or worse."

"What different sort of a whelp can ye look fer from such a dam ?” queried the old man, as he got up stiffly and haltingly from the door-step. "There was bad French blood on his daddy's side, and bad Injun, or the God knows what, on old Moll's side-no one ever did know rightly what she was, an' don't yit; an' what sort of a whelp can ye look for from stock like that? I'm a talkin' now!"

"Say, Bud," asked one of them, "didn't you know nothin' 'bout Le Fevre's woman comin' home?"

"No."

"You an' her was kind o' good friends. I thought may be they'd let ye know."

"No."

"There's the supper-bell, gentlemen," remarked the storekeeper, "and I'm going. Come in, Bud?"

"No."

The men gathered up their baskets and jugs. The sun had dropped almost to the summit of the mountain