"And arrest me," he said, "fo' a-killin' Mort Gibson in a cyard game, over on Shelton Laurel, five year ago come eight o'clock o' the night o' next September the thirteenth!" Alex Singleton, winner as well as loser, passed the officer his rifle and a revolver, and held out his wrists for manacles. X It was the third of August, and one of the warmest days of the summer. The extremely dry weather had withered all small vegetation; even the leaves of the laurel, that evergreen chaplet of the hills, were curled into little tubes and drooping. The majestic bald peak called Picketts Dome shimmered in the pale blue heat-haze. The ragged fringe of jackpines on the uneven, rockbound crest of the Big Blackfern stood motionless for lack of a breeze, seeming much like soldiers turned to stone in a battle-line that had previously suffered from the galling fire of some invincible enemy. Grandpap Singleton, the Prophet, mopped his old brow frequently with a faded bandana as he followed the Devil's Gate trail, going northward. He walked with a dogwood cane, his other hand resting on his rheumatic left hip; but in spite of his decrepitude there was about his movements an eagerness that suggested an objective point of no little importance. When he was barely through the Gate, he came upon old Granny Wolfe, who was kneeling beside the trail and trying to tie the ends of a 'coonhide shoestring that was somewhat too short. Before she knew that he was anywhere near her, he leaned over, touched her lightly on the shoulder, and cried out like some mischievous boy, "Boa!" The old hillwoman, startled, went stiffly to her feet. "Well, I wisht I may never! My sakes, Grandpap Bill Singleton, you skeered me mighty durned nigh it to death! Now what'n Tophet do ye mean, anyhow, a-slippin' up on folks that a-way?" She tried to appear very angry, and failed altogether. "Huh-huh!" laughed Grandpap Singleton, tugging at his long white beard. "How's yore old bones this mornin', Jane Wolfe?" Granny Wolfe smiled the smile she had been holding in with difficulty for half a minute. "Bill Singleton," she said, bending toward him, "ef it wasn't fo' the dad-burned old rheumatiz', I'd feel like a yearlin' colt! I've been a-totin' a buckeye-nut in my pocket, but it never done me a hoot's wo'th o' good. 'Bout the onliest thing 'at ever helped me any was good luck, lampile, and tarpentine. Ever try it, Bill, honey?" Some thirty feet back in the laurel, a huge and gaunt man whose black hair and beard were not without threads of silver, knelt before a ginseng plant. He had been listening, and he had heard every word of the little conversation that had just passed between his mother and the father of his bitterest enemy. Once he had whispered to himself, "Well, I'll be danged!" [Illustration]