E-text prepared by David Garcia, Stacy Brown Thellend, and the Project Gutenberg Online Distributed Proofreading Team (https://www.pgdp.net/) from page images generously made available by the Kentuckiana Digital Library (http://kdl.kyvl.org/) Note: Images of the original pages are available through the Electronic Text Collection of the Kentuckiana Digital Library. See http://kdl.kyvl.org/cgi/t/text/text-idx?c=kyetexts;cc=kyetexts;xc=1&idno=B92-178-30418584&view=toc DESTINY by CHARLES NEVILLE BUCK Author of The Call of the Cumberlands, Etc. New York Grosset & Dunlap Publishers Copyright, 1916, by W.J. Watt & Company OTHER BOOKS BY CHARLES NEVILLE BUCK THE KEY TO YESTERDAY THE LIGHTED MATCH THE PORTAL OF DREAMS THE CALL OF THE CUMBERLANDS THE BATTLE CRY THE CODE OF THE MOUNTAINS DESTINY Part I THE LAND OF PROMISE CHAPTER I Outside the subtle clarion of autumn's dying glory flamed in the torches of the maples and smoldered in the burgundy of the oaks. It trailed a veil of rose-ash and mystery along the slopes of the White Mountains, and inside the crumbling school-house the children droned sleepily over their books like prisoners in a lethargic mutiny. Frost had brought the chestnuts rattling down in the open woods, and foraging squirrels were scampering among the fallen leaves. Brooding at one of the front desks, sat a boy, slender and undersized for his thirteen years. The ill-fitting crudity of his neatly patched clothes gave him a certain uniformity with his fellows, yet left him as unlike them as all things else could conspire to make him. The long hair that hung untrimmed over his face seemed a black emphasis for the cameo delicacy of his features, lending them a wan note of pathos. On his thin temples, bluish veins traced the hall-mark of an over-sensitive nature, and eyes that were deep pools of somberness gazed out with the dreamer's unrest. Occasionally, he shot a furtively terrified glance across the aisle where another boy with a mop of red hair, a freckled face and a mouth that seemed overcrowded with teeth, made faces at him and conveyed in eloquent gestures threats of future violence. At these menacing pantomimes, the slighter lad trembled under his bulging coat, and he sat as one under sentence.