"I learned some things down there at school, Samson," said the girl,
slowly, "and I wish--I wish you didn't have to use it."
"Jim Asberry is dead," said the man, gravely.
"Yes," she echoed, "Jim Asberry's dead." She stopped there. Yet, her
sigh completed the sentence as though she had added, "but he was only
one of several. Your vow went farther."
After a moment's pause, Samson added: "Jesse Purvy's dead."
The girl drew back, with a frightened gasp. She knew what this meant,
or thought she did.
"Jesse Purvy!" she repeated. "Oh, Samson, did ye--?" She broke off,
and covered her face with her hands.
"No, Sally," he told her. "I didn't have to." He recited the day's
occurrences, and they sat together on the stile, until the moon had
sunk to the ridge top.
* * * * * Captain Sidney Callomb, who had been despatched in command of a
militia company to quell the trouble in the mountains, should have been
a soldier by profession. All his enthusiasms were martial. His
precision was military. His cool eye held a note of command which made
itself obeyed. He had a rare gift of handling men, which made them
ready to execute the impossible. But the elder Callomb had trained his
son to succeed him at the head of a railroad system, and the young man
had philosophically undertaken to satisfy his military ambitions with
State Guard shoulder-straps.
The deepest sorrow and mortification he had ever known was that which
came to him when Tamarack Spicer, his prisoner of war and a man who had
been surrendered on the strength of his personal guarantee, had been
assassinated before his eyes. That the manner of this killing had been
so outrageously treacherous that it could hardly have been guarded
against, failed to bring him solace. It had shown the inefficiency of
his efforts, and had brought on a carnival of blood-letting, when he
had come here to safeguard against that danger. In some fashion, he
must make amends. He realized, too, and it rankled deeply, that his men
were not being genuinely used to serve the State, but as instruments of
the Hollmans, and he had seen enough to distrust the Hollmans. Here, in
Hixon, he was seeing things from only one angle. He meant to learn
something more impartial.
Besides being on duty as an officer of militia, Callomb was a
Kentuckian, interested in the problems of his Commonwealth, and, when
he went back, he knew that his cousin, who occupied the executive
mansion at Frankfort, would be interested in his suggestions. The
Governor had asked him to report his impressions, and he meant to form
them after analysis.