"That thar is fer my gal," he said defiantly to the superintendent. "She'll git one the fust day of every month. Give her the larnin' she's so hell-bent on, stuff her plumb full on it. An' ef you let ennything happen to her"--his brows lowered threateningly--"I'll come back an' blow yer whole blame' horspittle into eternity!" "Pop!" Sally pleaded, "Pop!" But his emotions were at high tide and he did not heed her. Pushing her roughly aside, he strode back to the entrance hall, and was about to pick up his carpet sack when his gaze was suddenly arrested by the great marble figure that bends its thorn-crowned head in pity over the unhappy and the pain-racked mortals that pass beneath its outstretched hands. "You ain't goin' to leave me like this, Pop?" begged Sally. "Ef you take it so hard, I'll go back, an' I'll go willin'. Jus' say the word, Pop, an' I'll go!" The old mountaineer's one hand closed on the girl's bony arm in a tight clasp, his shoulders heaved, and his massive features worked, but his gaze never left the calm, pitying face of the Saviour overhead. He had followed his child without a tremor into the Valley of the Shadow of Death, but at the entrance of this new life, where he must let her go alone, his courage failed and his spirit faltered. His dominant will, hitherto the only law he knew, was in mortal combat with a new and unknown force that for the first time had entered his life. For several minutes he stood thus, his conflicting passions swaying him, as opposing gales shake a giant forest tree. Then he resolutely loosened his grip on the girl's arm and taking up his burden, without a word or a backward glance, set his face toward the hills, leaving an awkward, wistful girl watching him with her tears only half obscuring the vision that was already dawning for her. HOODOOED Gordon Lee Surrender Jones lay upon what he confidently claimed to be his death-bed. Now and again he glanced furtively at the cabin door and listened. Being assured that nobody was coming, he cautiously extricated a large black foot from the bedclothes, and, holding it near the candle, laboriously tied a red string about one of his toes. He was a powerful negro, with a close-cropped bullet-head, a massive bulldog jaw, and a pair of incongruously gentle and credulous eyes.