"You ought to look these fellows over; they're worth it. Savage lot, some of 'em. Remind me of the people who live about the foothills of the Balkans. Mountaineers are the same the world over, anyway. But you don't want to hunt for these Kentuckians in their own homes unless you send word you are coming, or you may run up against the end of a rifle before you know it. I don't blame them." Marny leaned back in his chair and turned toward me. "The Government is always hunting them as if they were wild beasts, instead of treating them as human beings. They can't understand why they shouldn't get the best prices they can for their corn. They work hard enough to get it to grow. Their theory is that the Illinois farmer feeds the corn to his hogs and sells the product as pork, while the mountaineer feeds it to his still and sells the product to his neighbors as whiskey. That a lot of Congressmen who never hoed a row of corn in their lives, nor ran a furrow, or knew what it was to starve on the proceeds, should make laws sending a man to jail because he wants to supply his friends with liquor, is what riles them, and I don't blame them for that, either." I arose from my chair and examined the sketch of the starving mountaineer. It was a careful study of a man with clear-cut features, slim and of wiry build, and was painted with that mastery of detail which distinguishes Marny's work over that of every other figure-painter of his time. The painter squeezed a tube of white on his palette, relit his cigarette, fumbled over his sheaf of brushes and continued: "The first of every month--just about now, by the way--they bring twenty or thirty of these poor devils down from the mountains and lock them up in Covington jail. They pass Aunt Chloe's house. Oh, Aunt Chloe!"--and he turned to the old woman--"did you see any of those 'wild people' the last two or three days?--that's what she calls 'em," and he laughed. "Dat I did, Colonel--hull drove on 'em. 'Nough to make a body sick to see 'em. Two on 'em was chained together. Dat ain't no way to treat people, if dey is ornery. I wouldn't treat a dog dat way." Aunt Chloe, sole dependence of the Art Club below-stairs: day or night nurse--every student in the place knows the touch of her hand when his head splits with fever or his bones ache with cold; provider of buttons, suspender loops and buckles; go-between in most secret and confidential affairs; mail-carrier--the dainty note wrapped up in her handkerchief so as not to "spile it!"--no, _she_ wouldn't treat a dog that way, nor anything else that lives and breathes or has feeling, human or brute. "If there's a new 'drove' of them, as Aunt Chloe says," remarked Marny, tossing aside his brushes, "let's take a look at them. They are worth your study. You may never have another chance." This was why it happened that within the hour Marny and I crossed the bridge and left his studio and the city behind us.