"Who's Spain?" Newt Spooner put the question gravely and with no sense of betraying untoward ignorance. In the log school-house years ago he might have been told the answer to that question, but such matters had since then escaped his attention. "Spain," enlightened the trader, whose geographical ideas had also until recently been vague, "is a country in ther other world--you has to go acrost the ocean ter git thar." "Who lives thar?" inquired the lad. "Hit's a country of outlanders." Newt stood for a moment gazing across the dreary wastes of broken ridges. "Well," he said calmly, "I reckon we kin go over thar an' lick 'em, ef need be." But, if the fever came slowly to the hills, it infected the men of the two new companies thoroughly enough when it did come. So far, each organization was drilling in its own territory, and, when the boy thought of Henry Falkins, it was not in connection with the war with Spain, but as the principal enemy in another war. On the lintel of the cabin door was a series of notches cut by his pocket-knife. Each month he added a fresh one at the end of the line. When he had cut twelve, he would have complied with his promise to the Deacon, and would once more tramp across the mountains on the mission which had been too often thwarted. Already there were seven of these cryptic reminders, and in a few days more the eighth would be added. Minerva came and went, and Newt at first spoke to her as little as possible; but, when the other women of the family nagged her, he rose fiercely to her defense. The girl sought by gentleness and diplomacy to win him back to open friendship, but he held sullenly aloof. At last, she said: "Newty, can't we be friends again? Even if you can't understand what I did, can't you believe me when I say I did it as much for you as for him?" He stood twisting his brogan toe in the hard-tramped dirt of the cabin yard. His face was expressionless. He looked at her, and turned away his face, while over it went a spasm of pain. "I reckons what ye did appeared right ter ye, M'nervy," he generously acceded. "I reckon I've got more quarrel with them new-fangled notions they l'arns ye down thar at ther college then what I hev with you. They aimed ter l'arn me them same things at ther penitenshery--but I wasn't ter be corrupted. But all I kin see is thet ye warned my enemy, an' thet ye made common cause with him ergin me." On the fourth of next July, Newt was going to have a celebration all his own. In his "marked-down" enemy, Newt saw a man whom he had never injured and who had, with smug hypocrisy, attacked him in a cowardly manner and made a felon of him. In his diseased imagination he pictured Falkins gloating over this triumph. That score he meant to settle. It was simple and immutable.