Buddy Lutts' hurts, while painful and stubborn, were flesh wounds, and the boy had spurned the bed. Slab, the negro, was a willing and deft helper. And Buddy attended Johnse with the devotion born of idolization. In Buddy's boyish appreciation Johnse Hatfield was now a hero, seconded only by his dead father's memory. One bullet had gone entirely through Hatfield, leaving six lodged therein. The surgeon from Hazard had extracted every other one, leaving three inside of Johnse. The doctor did not advance any prophecies direct, because he was not interrogated, but he told the "Ridin' parson" who had been up to the Lutts' house, that in two weeks more Johnse would be up and out, a little heavier, but sound as a grind-stone. Just at dawn each day, Johnse would open his eyes, yawn and vent an observation he had repeated regularly for three weeks: "Well--I 'low I'll go up t' th' still long 'bout noontime, Buddy--air yo' a goin' long?--little Cap?" Whereupon, Buddy would bring in the breakfast which old Slab had ready for him. Then Buddy would go to the "what-not" and get the treasured newspaper, and without protest, Johnse would read it all over to the boy, just as he had done each day since the paper had arrived. Logan, the audacious lawyer from the Blue-Grass, who had bearded the McGill faction in their own courthouse, had, thoughtfully, sent Johnse Hatfield a Frankfort newspaper, as a significant token of some sort of respect. The front side of this daily bore a picture, gotten up from description, of Johnse Hatfield. And under this spurious representation were three full-length columns presenting a graphic description of the "Bloodiest Clash in the History of Feudal Warfare," followed by details of the "Graveyard Massacre" by an eye-witness. According to these reporters, out of some eighty-eight men, who dashed down the road on that fateful night to slaughter the Lutts clan, forty-two of them never got away alive from the graveyard facade. To Buddy Lutts' keen appreciation, the only flaw in this wholesome narrative was the printed rumor that Sap McGill had escaped and was slowly recuperating over in Southpaw. CHAPTER XXII THE MISSION SCHOOL 'Twas some days ere Belle-Ann fitted her mood to her strange environments. The Mission School at Proctor was a beautiful place--a great rambling structure on the apex of a hill overlooking the picturesque Kentucky River. The building was girded with a continuous, spacious porch, and hemmed about with flowers, the identity of which was unknown to her. The grounds behind were unstinting, and reached half a mile back to the mountain abutting it. Flanking the building proper, on the verdant esplanade, stood a superb statue of Daniel Boone, embellished with a gurgling fountain which the State had recently reared on this spot where Boone had built his historic fortress.