Of course, she knew that, when he learned what she had done, Newt would believe that the one friend he had ever known had become his irretrievable enemy. Of course, in honesty, if he did not learn it from another source, she must herself tell him what part she had played in this day's happenings. That she would do, and in the end perhaps he would thank her. At last, on a spent and limping mule, she rode into Jackson. Finally, she stood face to face with the venerable old man, to whom she gave her message. Henry Falkins had not yet reached the town, but she conveyed her warning to his father, and, when she did so, she learned that the pre-arranged code of fox-horn signals had already brought the tidings, so she slipped away and hid herself indoors at the house of a kinsman. * * * * * It happened that just as Newt rode his horse around the bend of the north road and turned into Main Street, his eyes narrowed and his jaws clamped, and the lines that ran from his nose down around the corners of his mouth grew deeper and harder. He had heard the whistle of a train, and he knew that it was a signal announcing the approach of his victim. In point of fact, it heralded not only Henry Falkins, but Red Newton, and Buddy Spooner, his accomplice, freshly released on bond from the Winchester jail, and returning, perhaps, to fire the waiting volcano. Henry Falkins had seen the two defendants sitting quietly and peaceably in the smoking-car, and they had nodded affably to him. The young man stood now in the car vestibule, as the train roared over the trestle and slowed down at the station. On the platform were two groups of men. They stood with a space between them and eagerly watched the incoming cars. As Henry Falkins swung himself down from the step, he noted, despite the general and studied calmness of deportment, several details which were to his eye significant. He saw in both groups the faces of men from far away in the recessed fastnesses of the hills, who came to town rarely, save in answer to the call of the clan. These men were even more uncouth of apparel and wilder of visage than their brethren. Their dialect, too, was quaint, and some of them carried muzzle-loading squirrel-guns of a pattern long obsolete, save in the antiquated life of "over yon." McAllister Falkins met his son on the platform, and together they crossed the toll-bridge into the meandering streets of the town proper, where the shacks and houses sprawled like pieces thrown haphazard from a dice-box on a dozen levels and slants. At length, Old Mack voiced his apprehension: