The acknowledgment was somewhat difficult to make. This black sheep of her acquired family stood for all the things that the knightly Henry Falkins had deplored in speaking of the lawless spirit of the mountains. He was the sullen impersonation of the murder-spirit which shoots from ambush. He had come from prison and it was Mercy, not Justice, that had opened the iron gates to set him free. She did not know that the testimony of Falkins had put him there, or that Newt's set purpose was revenge, but she had shaped her heart to despise him, and he had in a rough way stood forth her champion. Perhaps, after all, he too had been a victim of conditions bigger and blacker than his own nature. Newt's scowl darkened. He was not accustomed to gratitude and in it found embarrassment. "Huh!" he growled. "Hit warn't nothin'. I jest natcherly hates ter heer so much damn' naggin'. Why don't ye jaw back at 'em? Air ye sceered?" The girl shook her head. "I ain't here much," she said, "an' I reckon thar's enough squabblin' in this house without me joinin' in." "Well, thet's yore business," commented the ex-convict, "but if I was you I'd stand up to 'em." He turned on his heel and left her. * * * * * To the house of McAllister Falkins "furriners" from the outside world came as to an oasis in a desert, or perhaps, more properly speaking, as to the tent of a great sheik set in the oasis, for the father of young Henry Falkins was "the grand old man of the mountains."