Mr. Sidney did not, in point of fact, go that night, but he did a few days later. Had he known it, he was safe enough. Kinnard Towers had no wish just then to hurl a challenge into the teeth of the whole state by harming a distinguished member of the metropolitan bar, but before George Sidney started out, the Quarterhouse leader had knowledge of his mission, and surmised that he would be sheltered at the house of Joel Fulkerson. When the lawyer arrived the old preacher was standing by the gate of his yard with a letter in his hand, that had arrived a little while before. It was from an anonymous writer and its message was this: "If you aid the lawyer from Louisville, in any fashion whatsoever, or take him into your house, it will cost you your life." Brother Fulkerson had been wondering whether to confide to any one the receipt of that threat. Heretofore factional bitterness had always passed him by. Now he decided to dismiss the matter without alarming his friends with its mention. As he strode forward to welcome the stranger, he absently tore the crumpled sheet of paper to bits and consigned it to the winds. "I am George Sidney," announced the man who was sliding from his saddle, stiff-limbed from a long ride. "I'm trying to effect the punishment of your son-in-law's murder, and I've come to your house." "Ye're welcome," said the evangelist simply, and there was no riffle of visible misgiving in his eyes. "Come right in an' set ye a cheer." Two days later Mr. Sidney rode away again, but in an altered frame of mind. He had met Bear Cat Stacy and was disposed to talk less slightingly of outlaws. He had even seen a thing that had made the flesh creep on his scalp and given to his pulses such a wild thrill as they had not known since boyhood. He had watched a long line of black horsemen, masked and riding single-file with flambeaux along a narrow road between encompassing shadows. He had heard the next day of a "blind tiger" raided, and of an undesirable citizen who had been sentenced to exile--though related by blood ties to the leader of the vigilance committee. It was sitting in the lounging-room of his Louisville Club a week later that he unfolded his morning paper and read the following item--and the paper dropped from his hand which had become suddenly nerveless. "Joel Fulkerson," he read, after the first shock of the head-lines, "a mountain evangelist, whose work had brought him into prominence even beyond the hills of Marlin County, was shot to death yesterday while riding on a mission of mercy through a thickly wooded territory. Since, even in the bitterest feud days, Fulkerson was regarded as the friend of all men and all factions, it is presumed that the unknown assassin mistook him for some one other than himself." George Sidney took an early train to Frankfort, and that same day sat in conference with the governor.