He stood silent for a long time, and all he heard was the heavy, half-panting breathing of the men at his right, at his left. There was not the shuffling of a foot, not the movement of a hand on either side. The eyes of each faction were glued upon the faces of the other. A tenser scene could not have been; nor could aught but starkest courage have evoked and dared it. There came a movement upon one side of the dimly lighted room. A hundred hands went backward, a hundred pairs of eyes gleamed. It was old Absalom Gannt who had moved. But his right hand went up above his shoulder, above his head. And it was empty! He rose slowly now to his full, gnarled height, and stood, his right hand, empty, still above his head. “Wait, boys!” he said. He turned and looked toward his right. Silently as a cat in his motion, Chan Bullock had also risen. But as he saw Absalom’s hand thrown up thus, he himself paused. The two faced one another, each sternly gazing into the face of his foe. Joslin himself stood motionless, looking from the one to the other, his own hands dropped empty at his sides. He had spoken. But he knew that the fate of the Cumberlands rested here on the decision of these two men. One false movement on the part of anyone, and the closed space had been a shambles. But Bullock with a quick gesture threw his own right hand above his head. He advanced toward old Absalom, the latter toward him, steadily, grimly, each with boring eyes that never yet had “flickered.” Then there was heard a strong and calm voice. “Fer’s I’m concerned,” said old Absalom Gammt, “I’m through if ye fellers air.” “Suits me,” rejoined Bullock. And so closed the meeting at the Forks of the Kentucky. CHAPTER XIV THE CROSSROADS IF EVER was happy wayfarer, that was David Joslin, as now he held his course back to the little Ohio village which had been his home these past two years. He walked eagerly, hurrying as does a man who realizes that there is much to be done with little time for the doing. He had no staff nor scrip, nor needed any in the course of his journey out from the Cumberlands to the edge of the great plateau. Here he found the railway leading to the north, and followed its line as any common tramp, for the good reason that he had not money for railway fare. Certain gentry of the road he met, but they neither accepted him as one of the guild, nor hindered him in his going, for they could not classify this man who walked slightly stooped, with pale face, but with long and steady stride, a man whose clothing betokened no luxury, but who still had something about him which did not grade him as one of the hopeless drifters of the world.