"You!" he whispered. "Just you, who intoxicate and torture me! And as for enigmatic compliments, I swear that you inspire me with only the highest reverence at all times. Don't think the library episode indicates a lack of respect! It was the very soul of reverence speaking--though," he slowly added, "it would not have spoken in just that way if Zack's toddy--" "I'm beginning to hate the very word of julep and toddy," she said passionately; and the Colonel, hearing this, turned with an amused expression of surprise. Ann had let Dale off her leash, and he now was making mental charges across the table to Jane, very much as a playful puppy would physically have done to one it wished to attract. She caught his eye and smiled, and then saw the haunted look in his face which aroused her at once to what was going on. The table had centered in a general conversation, and Miss Liz, without suspecting the sting it carried, had launched into a tirade against the lawlessness of the mountaineers who killed and were killed with an abandon worthy of Apaches. That he should now be so frantically signalling, as though he knew in her would be found help, touched the girl's responsive nature. Brent, seeing this--as he saw much that passed about him--whispered to her: "After all's said and done, it's a good feeling--that of being needed, isn't it?" "Our mountaineers are not law breakers, Lizzie," the Colonel was saying with more than ordinary sharpness in defense of his guest--and of his State. "They keep the law extraordinarily well." "How can you make such a statement!" the good lady cried. "I constantly hear of men being killed up in that wicked country!" "It's very much exaggerated, as Brent would say," he chuckled. "At any rate," he cleared his throat, "I refer to the common law." Bob and Brent exchanged winks. They knew the old gentleman was getting frightfully tangled, and were curious to see how he would work himself out of it. "Then I suppose you mean," her voice rang with the challenge, "that killing people is compatible with the common law?" "Legal hangings are," he smiled blandly. "But, what I do seriously mean is this: the common law of a country, and therefore the common law of a place, is merely--and nothing more than--a common custom plus the power to change that custom. This being the case, the mountaineer of Kentucky is within the common law of his section, providing that he kills only within that section where it is a common custom--plus the power to change that custom." Miss Liz sighed. "It doesn't sound like good sense," she said, "but may be correct. I have always thought that law is law, everywhere."