"I reckon my life's done been ruint a'ready," he declared. Then, with an up-leaping voice, he demanded as he fiercely caught her fore-arms in an iron grasp: "Ye says I don't understand Henry Falkins. What does ye know about him beyond what I knows?" The jealousy that rang through the question was the only declaration of love he had ever made to her, and his fingers unconsciously bit into her arms until they ached. "He came down to the school," she said faintly, "and he gave me this medal because I had--I had tried to study hard." She had succeeded in withdrawing her hands, and groped at her throat for the small metal disc, which she held out to him. But he drew back, his eyes gleaming venomously. "I'd ruther tech a rattle-snake," he declared in a voice which she hardly recognized, "then ter lay hands on anything thet damned dog hed teched." She stood dazed, and he went on in the high-timbered shrillness of excitement: "Some day I'm a-goin' to have a reckonin' with thet feller, an', when I gits through, he won't go roun' givin' medals to no other gals." He wheeled and stamped out of the room, and the girl did not know that for hours he tramped the snowy woods of the mountainsides, cursing under his breath, and redoubling his oath of reprisal. * * * * * News from the outside world percolates slowly into the quarantine of the beleaguered hills. A fever that rushes hotly through the arteries of the nation from sea to sea, is hardly a flush to the country that leads its own isolated life. From Washington to 'Frisco, men were gathering at bulletin boards and clinging with hot excitement to the latest word of tidings. In city armories, militiamen were inspecting kits and drilling overtime. The _Maine_ had been blown up in Havana harbor. The war fever was burning thousands into fitful patriotism, but back there in the Cumberland mountains, where men scarcely knew who was President of the United States, life was going more placidly than usual. The war which this country knew most about had waned into a two-years' truce. Less than for two decades was there thought of fighting and blood-letting. One day, Newt met a trader riding a spent mule through the mired roads with a newspaper protruding from his splattered saddle-bags. "I reckon you soldiers'll get a chance ter sashay out an' show what's in ye now," said the trader with a grin, as though he found the idea highly humorous. "What does ye mean?" demanded the boy, resting on his grounded rifle and fixing the other with steady, incurious eyes. "Hes the Falkinses busted the truce?" The trader laughed. "Wuss then thet. This country's a-goin' ter declare war on Spain." He made the announcement with the superior air of one in touch with large and distant affairs.