Over all the flanks and summits of the Appalachian range the snow lay deep in the shelter of the pines. It was the accumulation of the long winter, compact, and covered with a glaze of ice. All through the winter the creek on which the mill was built flowed quietly in its course, held in check by the icy rein of the zero weather. But the stream grew deeper and swifter as the days advanced, and when the swamp-apple and the wild cherry were like woodland fairies in their robes of tender pink and creamy white, when the rumble of the partridge’s wings was heard and the violets were scarfs of blue flung here and there, the south wind swept along the range with lowering clouds, the heavens were opened, and the rain began. In “the twinkling of an eye” the stream they had relied upon to run their mill swept every vestige of their labor out of sight, “lock, stock, and barrel,” as Crockett described the disaster. Few men care to build upon the scene of ruined hopes, and John Crockett moved on again. We follow him next to a place on the road that was frequented by travellers between Virginia and Nashville. Here he kept an inn for the wayfarer――a poor kind of an affair, where only such people as wagoners were likely to halt. They were as rough as the roads over which they came, and in feeding such guests there was small profit. The Western settlers were always ready to take arms against any authority that held too tight a rein, and each man was as quick to show fight in his own behalf. In his later years, David Crockett remembered the little tavern between Jonesboro and Knoxville as a place of “hard times, and plenty of ’em.” It was there that Davy first saw Andrew Jackson, who was afterwards his leader in the Creek War of 1813. Already the renown of the State’s Attorney had become a household subject in Tennessee. Jackson feared no man, and brought to justice the most defiant of the mountaineers. The men of that day had a habit of settling their differences out of court, which caused many to die “with their boots on.” Much the same system even now prevails in some parts of Kentucky and Tennessee. To those who have deplored the passionate natures and the crimes of the foreign element in our country, it may be said that the most lawless and cruel of our citizens are primitive Americans, the feudists of the Dark and Bloody Ground and the Big Bend State. The reason why Jackson had most of the court cases in those days was because they were criminal suits, and to him, as public prosecutor, came the duty of conducting them.