The morning came with a crystal clarity and hills locked in a grip of ice, but the army whose marching song had startled sleeping cabins into wakefulness had dissolved as though its ghostly existence could not survive the light of day. Yet behind that appearance and disappearance had been left an impression so profound that the life of the community would never again be precisely what it had been before. A new power had arisen, inexplicable and mysterious--but one that could no longer be ignored. With bated breath, around their hearth fires, the timorous and ignorant gossiped of witchcraft, and sparking swains were already singing to the accompaniment of banjo and "dulcimore" ballads of home-made minstrelsy, celebrating the unparalleled achievements of the young avenger of wrong-doings and his summary punishment of miscreants. They sang of the man who: "Riz outen ther night with black specters at his back, Ter ther numbers of scores upon scores, An' rid straightway ter ther dwellin' house of Bad Jim Towers, Who treemored es they battered down ther doors." More than one mountain girl bent forward listening with heightened pulses as the lad who had come "sweet-heartin'" her shrilled out his chorus. "So his debt fer thet evil Jim Towers hed ter pay, Fer they driv him outen old Kaintuck, afore ther break of day. All sich es follers burnin' down a pore man's happy home, Will hev ter reck ther Bear Cat's wrath an' no more free ter roam." And perhaps as the lass listened, she wondered if her own home-spun cavalier might not be going straight from her door to one of those mysterious meetings where oath-bound men gathered in awful and spectral conclave. Sometimes, too, it was not only a song but an actual sight as well, which made the flesh creep along the scalp. Sometimes out of the distances came, first low and faint, then swelling into fulness that chorus of male voices along the breeze, and after it came the sight of a long serpent of light crawling the highways. Through doors opened only to slits wondering eyes peered out into the blackness while that mysterious procession passed, seemingly an endless line of torches shining on black horsemen riding in single file. When the singing ended and the night-riders went in silence they were even more awe-inspiring and ghost-like than before--and, except by remembering that the man of the house was absent, no woman could guess who any member of the train might be, for they passed with hat brims bent low and black masks coming down to their black slickers, and even their horses were swathed in flowing coverings of the same inky disguise. They were torch-lit silhouettes riding the night, but when they passed, those who saw them knew that some task was being accomplished in which the law had failed and that somewhere black dread would deservedly strike. Kinnard Towers himself, racking his brain, took a less romantic view, but one of equal concern.