Suddenly Boone rose with an abrupt but fixed resolve. "By Godelmighty!" he exclaimed. "I reckon I'll jest kinderly sa'anter over thar and stay all night, too. I'd love ter listen at 'em talk." Here in the hills where the very meagreness makes a law of hospitality he had never heard of a traveller who asked a night's lodging being turned away. Yet when he arrived and lifted his hand to knock he hesitated for a space, gulping his heart out of his throat, suddenly stricken with the enormity of intruding himself, unbidden, upon such notable presences. Then the door swung open, and the boy found himself stammering with a tongue that had become painfully and ineptly stiff: "I've done got belated on ther highway--an' I'm leg-weary," he prevaricated. "I 'lowed mebby ye'd suffer me ter come in an' tarry till mornin'." Over the preoccupation of McCalloway's face broke an amused smile, and he stepped aside, waving his hand inward with a gesture of welcome. "General Prince, permit me to present my young friend, Boone Wellver," he announced, stifling the twinkle of his eyes, and speaking with ceremonial gravity. "He is a neighbour of mine--who tells me he has dropped in for the night." The seated gentleman with the gray moustache and beard came to his feet, extending his hand, and under the overwhelming innovation of such courtesy, Boone was even more palpably and painfully abashed. But as vaguely comprehended etiquette, he recognized its importance and accordingly came forward with the stiffness of an automaton. "Howdy," he said with a stupendous solemnity. "I've done heerd tell of ye right often, an' hit pleasures me ter strike hands with ye. Folks says ye used ter be one of ther greatest horse-thievin' raiders that ever drawed breath." When the roar of General Prince's laughter subsided--a laughter for which Boone could see no reason, the boy drew a chair to the corner of the hearth and sat as one may sit in the wings of a theatre, his breath coming with the palpitation of simmering excitement. Soon the elders seemed to have forgotten him in the heated absorption of their debate. They were threshing over the campaigns of the war between the States and measuring the calibre of commanders as a backwoods man might estimate the girth and footage of timber. Boone nursed contented knees between locked fingers while the debate waxed warm. Not only were battles refought there in retrospect, with such illuminating vividness as seemed to dissolve the narrow walls into a panoramic breadth of smoking, thunderous fields, but motive and intent were developed back of the engagements. Boone in the chimney corner sat mouse-quiet. He seemed to be rapturously floating through untried spaces on a magic carpet.