The fight was on in fierce earnestness between the raiders and defenders of the gate. [Illustration: A rider.] CHAPTER XV. The distance that Milton Derr had to go to reach the New Pike gate, from where the raiders halted and held parley, was but a short one, measured by paces, yet during that brief ride many irrelevant things came crowding fast upon his memory--indeed, it seemed that his whole life's history was swiftly reviewed in that brief period. His boyhood days arose to his mind--those careless, happy days of early youth that were spent amid the wild, sweet freedom of the hills, from which he had just now ridden--the old schoolhouse in Alder Creek glen, that unforgotten spot where pretty Sally Brown had first ensnared his boyish heart and held it a willing captive ever since. He recalled to mind the sharp pangs of jealousy Jade Beddow took a delight in arousing in his youthful bosom by showing marked attention to the object of their mutual admiration--then of gloomier matters, his mother's illness and her death, which had wrung his heart with the bitterest grief that had ever crept into his young life. There came to mind a memory of the subsequent home with his uncle--a home that meant little else than a mere shelter, and an opportunity for much hard work, for the Squire was a grasping man, close and calculating, and required of every one the last atom of effort. Most clear in his memory was that eventful day when his uncle first learned that the smiles of the pretty toll-taker were rather for the nephew than for the uncle, and this discovery seemed suddenly to change the Squire's indifference toward his ward into an intense hatred, which smoldered for a while, then at last broke forth into a fierce flame of passion, when there was a bitter quarrel, and the young man was driven from his uncle's roof, and went back to live amid his native hills once more. When Milton Derr made up his mind to join the raiders, he was actuated by the two strongest passions that sway the human heart--love and hate. The first and uppermost one urged him to join the band in order that he might be able to influence the members to spare the New Pike gate, for the present, at least; the second made it evident that, by aiding in the general destruction of toll-houses throughout the county, and the abolishment of tolls, he would be in a position to do his kinsman much damage, and affect the most vulnerable spot in evidence--his pocket. Thus, in Derr's bosom, love and hate held almost equal sway. All these things passed in hurried view through the rider's excited mind, like a fleeting panorama, brief, yet clear and intense as the glimpse of a surrounding landscape seen by the flash of the lightning's path across the starless heavens.