He would not be immediately needed on the farm, and Frankfort was only fifteen miles away. If he set out at once and walked most of the night, he could reach the Mecca of his pilgrimage by tomorrow morning, and in his pocket was the sum of "two-bits" to defray the expenses of "snacks an' sich-like needcessities." For the avoidance of possible discussion, he slipped quietly out of the back door with no announcement to Saul's wife. With soft snowflakes drifting into his face and melting on his eyelashes, he began his march, and for four hours swung along at a steady three-and-a-half mile gait. At last he stole into a barn and huddled down upon a straw pile, but before dawn he was on the way again, and in the early light he turned into the main street of the state capital. His purpose was to view one day of life in a city and then to slip back to his uneventful duties. * * * * * The town had outgrown its first indignant surprise over the invasion of the "mountain army," and the senator from Kenton had passed boldly through its unordered ranks, as need suggested. The hill men had fallen sullenly back and made a path for his going. This morning he walked with a close friend, who had constituted himself a bodyguard of one. The upper house was to meet at ten, and it was five minutes short of the hour when the man, with preoccupied and resolute features, swung through the gate of the state house grounds. The way lay from there around the fountain to the door set within the columned portico. In circling the fountain, the companion dropped a space to the rear and glanced about him with a hasty scrutiny, and as he did so a sharp report ripped the quietness of the place, speedily followed by the more muffled sound of pistol shots. The gentleman in the rear froze in his tracks, glancing this way and that in a bewildered effort to locate the sound. The senator halted too, but after a moment he wavered a little, lifted one hand with a gesture rather of weariness than of pain, and, buckling at the knees, sagged down slowly until he lay on the flag-stoned walk, with one hand pressed to the bosom of his buttoned overcoat. Figures were already running up from here and there. As the dismayed friend locked his arms under the prone shoulders, he heard words faintly enunciated--not dramatically declaimed, but in strangely matter-of-fact tone and measure--"I guess they've--got me." * * * * * Boone Wellver saw a throng of tight-wedged humanity pressing along with eyes turned inward toward some core of excited interest, and heard the words that ran everywhere, "Goebel has been shot!" He felt a sudden nausea as he followed the crowd at whose centre was borne a helpless body, until it jammed about the door of a doctor's office, and after that, for a long while, he wandered absently over the town.