"It's a strange story," said the chief executive at length, "and the remedy you suggest is even stranger--but this far I will go. If you swear Renshaw off the bench, I will name a temporary judge and set a special term of court, to convene at once. The rest comes later, and we will take it up as we reach it." * * * * * Once more, just after that, Bear Cat Stacy stood again with Blossom by a new-made grave, but this time he came openly. Those kinsmen who saw him there were of one mind, and had he spoken the word, they would have followed him through blood to vengeance. But Stacy, with the hardest effort of his life, held them in check. It would mar the peaceful sleep of that gentle soul whom they were laying to rest, he thought, to punish bloody violence with other bloody violence--and in his mind a more effective plan was incubating. All that he would tell the grim men who met in conclave that night, ready to don their masks and fare forth, was that this was, above all others, an occasion for biding their time. "But I pledges ye faithful," he declared in a voice that shook with solemn feeling, "ye won't hev need ter grow wearied with waitin'...." No Towers watchmen came in these days to Turner's house. They contented themselves with keeping a vindictive vigil along the creeks and tributaries where they were numerically stronger. Each day Turner came to watch over Blossom with the quiet fidelity of a great dog. There was little enough that he could do, but he came and looked at her with hungry eyes out of a hungry heart, speaking no word of his own love, but listening as she talked of her father. He sought in a hundred small ways to divert her thoughts from the grim thing that had twice scarred her life and taken the light out of her eyes. As he trudged back to his house, where he had again taken up his residence, after these visits, he walked with a set jaw and registered oaths of reprisal to take a form new to the hills. As the days passed it was reported that on the motion of the commonwealth, alleging bias and prejudice, Judge Renshaw had vacated the bench, and that the governor had named a pro-tem. successor from another district--and called a special term of court, to sit at Marlin Town. Kinnard Towers heard that news with a smile of derision. "Let 'em bring on thar jedges an' soldiers," he said complacently. "Ther law still fo'ces 'em ter put native names in ther jury wheel an' I reckon no grand jury thet dwells hyar-abouts won't hardly indict me ner no petty jury convict me." So it was something of a shock to his confidence when he heard that he, Black Tom Carmichael and Sam Carlyle had been indicted for conspiracy to commit murder. Even that he regarded as merely an annoyance, for as one of the grand jurors had hastened to assure him: "Hit war jest a sort of a formality, Kinnard. We knowed ther little jury would cl'ar you-all an' hit looked more legal-like ter let hit come up fer trial."