What happened to David Joslin they did not know—he himself did not. He was perhaps conscious of a heavy blow at the base of his head, then came unconsciousness, oblivion. He fell upon the floor of the rude revel house. Firing ceased now. The occupants of the cabin rushed out. The defenders of the line of boulders, three only in number now, broke and sprang up the mountain side, pursued by a rain of bullets which touched none of them. The frolic at Semmes’ Cove had found its ending—not an unusual ending for such scenes. CHAPTER V THE AWAKENING OF DAVID JOSLIN IN THE old apple orchard of Preacher Joslin—whose gnarled trees had been planted by some unknown hand unknown years ago—a long and narrow rift showed in the rocky soil. The owner of these meager acres was now come to his rest, here by the side of many others of his kin whose graves, unmarked, lay here or there, no longer identified under the broken branches of the trees. A neighbor blacksmith had wrought sufficient nails to hold together a rough box. In this he and Granny Joslin had placed the dead man. Word passed up and down the little creek that the burying of Andrew Joslin would be at noon that day; so one by one horses came splashing down the creek—usually carrying a man with a woman back of him, the woman sometimes carrying one child, sometimes two. These brought fresh word. Calvin Trasker, killed in the frolic at Semmes’ Cove, had already been buried. He was accounted well avenged. It was almost sure he had killed his man before he had received his own death wound. As for Chan Bullock and his two young cousins, they were no less than heroes. Four of the Gannt family had been left accounted for, whether by aim of the fallen or that of the three escaping feudists none might say. The Joslins had none the worst of it. Had not one of them—which, no one could tell—fired the shot which broke old Absalom’s arm? This funeral party, practically a rallying of the Joslin clan, was no time more of special mourning than of exultation. The talk was not so much of the dead man, not so much of the dead man’s son David, who was still missing, as it was of the victory attained over the rival clan. And so they buried Preacher Joslin, and thereafter, all having been duly concluded, and a simple, unmarked stone having been set up at the head of his grave, old Granny Joslin, robbed of her son and her son’s son, asked them once more to eat of what she had, and so presently bade them good-by. “I’ll git along somehow, folks,” said she. “Don’t you-all worry none about me. If Davy’s daid, why, he’s daid, an’ that’s all about it. Atter a few days, you-all go over in thar an’ watch for buzzards an’ crows—if they hain’t buried him deep, we’ll find out whar he’s at.”