"No yo' won't ... leastwise not yet!" Judd's words came with crisp finality, and were reinforced by a quick movement of his rifle to the hip. "I haint through with ye yet, stranger. Last year I warned ye fair thet this hyar mountain war an on-healthy place fer ye. 'Pears like yo' didn't believe hit, but I means thet ye should this time. Erfore yo' goes I'll hear ernother sworn promise from ye, an' I reckon yo' kin guess what hit air." "I can. And you're not going to get it. No, by God, not if you put a coward's bullet into me for refusing," burst out Donald, with his pent-up anger breaking its bounds at the other's dictatorial demands. "I agreed that what you did with your time wasn't my business, but what I do with mine, is. And I don't take orders from you in the matter, understand?" The mountaineer's lips drew back, his body quivered, and the finger on the rifle's trigger trembled. Above him, Donald stood equally tense and pale. He felt that he should be praying as he had never prayed before, but wrath possessed his spirit wholly, and his mind was completely concentrated on that lean forefinger, whose slightest tension meant death. Moments like these come but once in the lifetime of the average man, if, indeed, they ever come at all; but, when they do, when he suddenly finds himself face to face with some cataclysmic upheaval in human or external nature that threatens to rend the thin but impenetrable curtain which separates him from eternity, the salient characteristic of his being is unmasked and stands forth, naked. If he be at heart a coward, even though he may honestly never have suspected himself of cowardice, he will try to flee, or cringe and grovel for mercy; if his soul is stayed upon the immortal and everlasting truths, he will face what Fate may hold with the resigned fortitude which was the martyrs'; but, if he is merely a man, strong with the courage of the beast, refined and strengthened in the fires of intellect, he will be more likely to stand his ground unflinchingly and cast his defiance in the teeth of the danger which threatens, wrathful, but unafraid. Donald was of the latter breed. He made no move; but the cords and veins in his muscular neck and hands swelled visibly, and his dark gray eyes took on a steely glint, as they bored steadily into Judd's glowering black ones. Suddenly, with a deep oath, the mountaineer dropped the butt of his gun to the ground. Both men breathed a deep sigh, and the latter said: "No, I kaint shoot an unarmed man, even ef he _air_ a skunk. But hark ye. I warns ye now fer the last time. Clar out uv this hyar mountain terday, er go armed an' ready, fer, by Gawd A'mighty, I aims ter shoot ye dead the next time I meets ye. Hit's yo' er me now."