"I understands, Turney," she declared hastily, "an'--an'--I'm a-goin' ter be prayin' fer ye afore I lays down ternight!" As Turner watched the preacher mount and ride away, his daughter walking alongside, he did not return to the house. He meant to fight it out in his own way. Last night when the hills had rocked to the fury of the storm--he had surrendered. To-night when the moonlit slopes drowsed in the quiet of silver mists, the storm was in himself. Within a few feet of the gate he took his seat at the edge of a thick rhododendron bush, where the shadow blotted him into total invisibility. He sat there drawn of face and his hands clenched and unclenched themselves. He did not know it, but, in his silence and darkness, he was growing. There was for him a touch of Golgotha in those long moments of reflection and something of that anguished concentration which one sees in Rodin's figure of "The Thinker"--that bronze man bent in the melancholy travail of the birth of thought. When an hour later Kinnard Towers and his cortège trooped out of Lone Stacy's house, Jerry Henderson, willing to breathe the freshness of the night, strolled along. The men with the rifles swung to their saddles and rode a few rods away, but Towers himself lingered and at last with a steady gaze upon the stranger he made a tentative suggestion. "I don't aim ter discourage a man thet's got fine ideas, Mr. Henderson, but hev ye duly considered thet when ye undertakes ter wake up a country thet's been slumberin' as ye puts hit, fer two centuries, ye're right apt ter find some sleepy-heads thet would rather be--left alone?" "I'm not undertaking a revolution," smiled the new arrival. "I'm only aiming to show folks, by my own example, how to better themselves." The man who stood as the sponsor of the old order mounted and looked down from his saddle. "Hain't thet right smart like a doctor a-comin' in ter cure a man," he inquired dryly, "a-fore ther sick person hes sent fer him? Sometimes ther ailin' one moutn't take hit kindly." "I should say," retorted Henderson blandly, "that it's more like the doctor who hangs out his shingle--so that men can come if they like." There was a momentary silence and at its end Towers spoke again with just a hint of the enigmatical in his voice. "Ye spoke in thar of havin' personal knowledge thet ther railroad didn't aim ter come acrost Cedar Mounting, didn't ye?" "Yes." "Well now, Mr. Henderson--not meanin' ter dispute ye none--I don't feel so sartain about thet." "I spoke from fairly definite information." The man on horseback nodded. "I aims ter talk pretty plain. We're a long ways behind ther times up hyar, an' thet means thet we likes ter sort of pass on folks thet comes ter dwell amongst us." "I call that reasonable, Mr. Towers."