It was not the blood of another race that set the Derfs apart; but it may have been traits which came with the wild strain. There was a good deal of money going among the clan. Old man Derf was a general trader; also he engaged in tanbark hauling in the season, and some other contracting enterprises such as required the use of ready cash. In the back room of the main house there was quite a miscellaneous stock of provisions, goods, and oddments for sale. Derf was more than suspected of being a moonshiner or [51] of dealing with moonshiners. He gave dances or frolics of some sort at his house very frequently, and there was always plenty of whisky. At one time or another the family had lived in the Settlement a good deal, and come off rather smudged from their residence in that place. Indeed, your true mountaineer believes that sin is of the valley, and looks for no good thing to come out of the low ground. In a simple society, like that of the mountains, the line is drawn with such savage sharpness that the censors hesitate to draw it at all. Yet a palpable cloud hung over the Derfs. While not completely outcast, they were of so little standing that their house was scarcely a respectable place for a young, unmarried woman to be seen frequently. Ola, Garrett Derf's second daughter, a girl of twenty, and a homely, high-couraged, hard muscled little creature, was permitted in the neighborhood circle of young girls rather on sufferance; but she did not trouble them greatly with her presence, preferring as a rule her own enterprises. Lance Cleaverage, a free, unfettered spirit, trammeled by no social prejudices, came often to the frolics at Derf's. He seldom danced himself, whisky he never touched; but he loved to play for the others, and he got all the stimulation which his temperament and his mood asked out of the crowd, the lights, the music, and some indefinable element into which these fused for him. [52]