cut-off footpath. There set that cold-blooded bush-whacker on the same log, looking down the road the way I had kited, with his gun kinder restin' on his knees. I rested on a stump and took him square in the middle of the back. He gave a yell and jumped erbout five feet, but it was too late to jump. 'Taint nothing to it, a plain case of self-defense and 'parent necessity. But if you stay up in this country, I like yer looks and will give yer first chance on that easy money."

"I thank you for the offer. It is worth at least five hundred dollars to undertake your defense; as it is not a case of self-defense and apparent necessity, as you seem to think. Much depends upon the jury in such a case. You need a good lawyer who will be well acquainted with the panel, else you may be sent to the penitentiary."

"Son, you've got a lot to larn yit. Man alive! You folks have talked so much it's nigh erbout bed-time. Why that boy is asleep. Would you like to turn in?"

CHAPTER II.

Cornwall Meets a Mountain Maid.

After breakfast, at which the men were first served, Mr. Rogers, Cornwall, Mr. Saylor and Caleb, mounting their horses rode over Saylor's three hundred-acre survey and examined the two coal banks on the property; which only a short distance from the house had been opened and worked about twenty feet into the mountain, for home consumption. One was thirty-eight and the other fifty-two inches; the thick vein cropped out about twenty feet above the creek level, the other was at a higher level.

After their examination they returned to the house and taking seats on the wash bench near the well, talked about every thing but the land of which Mr. Rogers and Saylor were thinking. Finally Mr. Rogers having waited some time for Mr. Saylor to begin, said:

"If our company can buy the Brock and Helton surveys, we will give you thirty thousand dollars for your three hundred acres, or twenty thousand dollars for the mineral rights with timber and right-of-way privileges necessary to mine and remove the coal and such other minerals, oils and gas as may be found on the property."

"By heck! my survey is worth three times that. When your company planks down fifty thousand in cold cash we will trade,—not before. Then I will buy one of them blue grass farms in sight of the distant blue mountains and an automobile and a pianny and give Caleb and little Susie a chance to go to the University at Lexington whar Tom Asher and that Hall boy goes. O Mandy! Mr. Rogers, hayr, just offered to gin me thirty thousand dollars for our old mountain home which we bought two year ago from old man Roberts for five thousand. I told him we would trade her off for fifty thousand; not such bad intrust for a mountain yahoo and his old woman, He! Mandy! When that trade goes through; and they are bound to take her, you can have one of them silk dresses what shows black and blue and red and green; and Mary all the books and pot flowers and pictures she wants. What do you say to that, Mary?" just as Mary stepped from the kitchen to fill the brass-hooped cedar bucket at the well.

Caleb lolled on the steps in such a way as to make it impossible for any one to descend.

"Caleb, please let me pass!"

"Oh, go round Mary, or jump down. What do yer bother a feller for?"

"Miss Mary, let me fill your bucket?"

"Thanks, Mr. Cornwall." (Caleb laughs.)

Cornwall took the bucket and twice let it down and brought it up without a quart in it, while Caleb looked on and laughed.

Finally Mary, smiling and blushing, took hold of the pole and helped to dip and draw up the bucket full to the brim. Then they laugh too; and the social ice is broken between Bear Grass and Straight Creek; between the city-bred young lawyer and Mary, the mountain girl.

Cornwall carried the bucket into the kitchen; at which Caleb, in surprise, called out: "Dad, look! That city feller is helping Mary get dinner."

After dinner, which Cornwall did not help get, rushing out of the kitchen as soon as he could let go of the bucket handle, having heard Caleb's remark; they rode over the Brock and Helton two hundred-acre surveys and called at their homes.

Mr. Rogers contracted to purchase their land at one hundred dollars an acre, the vendors executing bonds to convey, each receiving one thousand dollars on the purchase price; the balance to be paid after a survey and examination of their titles.

As they were riding home, Saylor saw a drunken man staggering down the mountain side. When he had gotten out of sight, he dismounted and began trailing him back up the mountain. Mr. Rogers called out, "The man went the other way."

"Oh, I know that! I want to find out where he came from."

Saylor returned in a few minutes, his face beaming with a ruddy, contented smile.

Then, in his usually talkative mood, he expressed his opinion of his neighbors and the transaction in reference to their land. "There are two more dang fools, who will move down in the blue grass and buy a farm and be as much at home as a hoot owl on a dead snag in the noon day sun with a flock of crows cawing at him. In about two years they will sell out to some sharper and move back to some mountain cove or crick bottom and start all over again; or when they gits their money they will hop the train cars for Kansas and settle on a government claim twenty miles from a drap of water; then mosey back here in about five years with nothing but their kids, the old woman, two bony horses, a prairie schooner and a yaller dog."

As they came in the door, Mary was just completing preparation for supper. The table was made more attractive by a red figured table cloth instead of the brown and white oil cloth one. In the center was a pot of delicate ferns. The regular fare of corn bread, hog meat, corn field beans, potatoes, sorghum and coffee, had been supplemented by some nicely browned chicken, a roll of butter, biscuits and a dish of yellow apples and red plums.

As they came to supper, a gentle rain began falling which continued long into the night.

Cornwall, standing by his chair and noticing again that places were prepared for the men only, said; "Mrs. Saylor, the rain makes it so cozy and home-like, you, Miss Mary and Susie fix places and eat with us; I am sure we will all have a better time."

Saylor stopped eating long enough to add;—"Do, it will seem like a Christmas dinner in the summertime."

While Caleb remarked;—"He's coming along right peart."

Mary, with a laugh and blush and an appreciative smile at Mr. Cornwall, added a place for her mother and Susie, while she served the supper.

Cornwall, who had paid little attention to the girl, furtively watching her, was impressed by her competence and winsomeness. She was a healthy sun-browned brunette of eighteen; had attended the Pineville graded school for three years and the summer before passed the examination and qualified as a teacher. She had been given the school at the forks of the creek and was paid a salary of thirty-five dollars a month, most of which went to pay her father's taxes and for books.

The children of her school were of divers ages and sizes. There were lank boys taller than Mary and little girls that needed to be cuddled and mothered. The native children, mostly a tow-headed lot, were easily distinguished from the children of the families at the mines, whose parents were from Naples or Palermo.

Not even the girls from Southern Italy had blacker hair or more dreamy eyes than Mary's. Hers was a seeming nature and appearance made of a composite of the girls of her school; natives