The Green Forest tribune., 1915-01-01

vals Of truce, lives had been snuffed out in the fiercely burning hate of these men whose ancestors had been comrades.
 Old Spicer South and his nephew Samson were the direct lineal descen- dants of the namer of Misery. Their kinsmen dwelt about them: the Souths, the Jaspers, the Spicers, the Wileys, the Millers and McCagers. Other fam lilies, related only by marriage and close association, were, in feud align ment, none the less "Souths." And over beyond the ridge, where the springs and brooks flowed the other way to feed Crippleshin, dwelt the Hollmans the Purvises, the Asberries, the Hollises and the Daltons-men equally strong in their vindictive fealty to the code of the vendetta.
 By mountain standards old Spicer South was rich. His lands had been claimed when tracts could be had for the taking, and, though he had to make his cross mark when there was con tract to be signed, his instinctive mind was shrewd and far seeing. The tinkle of his cowbells was heard for long distance along the creek bottoms. His hillside fields were the richest and his coyes the most fertile in that country. Some day, when a railroad should bur row through his section, bringing the development of coal and timber at the head of the rails, a sleeping fortune would yaWn and awake to enrich him. There were black outcroppings along the cliffs, which he knew ran deep in veins of bituminous wealth. But to that time he looked with foreboding. for he had been raised to the stand ards of his forefathers and saw in the coming of new regime a curtailment of personal liberty. For newfangled ideas he held only the aversion of deep-rooted prejudice. He hoped that he might live out his days and pass before the foreigner held his land and the law became power stronger than the individual or the clan. The law was his ener-y, because it said to him, Thou shalt not" when he sought to take the yellow corn which bruising labor had coaxed from scattered rock strewn fields to his own mash vat and still. It meant, also, a tyrannous power usually seized and administered by enemies, which undertook to forbid the personal settlement of personal quarrels. But his eyes, which could not read print, could read the signs of the times. He foresaw the inev- itable coming of that day. Already he he had given up the worm and mash vat, and no longer sought to make or sell illicit liquor. That was a conces- sion to the federal power, which could no longer be successfully fought. State power was still largely a weapon in factional hands, and in his country the Hollmans were the office holders. To the Hollmans he could make no concessions. In Samson, born to be the lighting man, reared to be the | fighting man, equipped by nature with deep hatreds and tigerish courage there had cropped out from time to time the restless spirit of the philos opher ahd hunger for knowledge That was a matter in which the old man found his bitterest and most se cret apprehension.
 It was at this house that George Lescott, distinguished landscape paint CT of New York and the world at large arrived in the twilight
 Whatever enemy might have to be met tomorrow, old Spicer South rec. ognized as more immediate call upon his attention the wounded guest of today One of the kinsmen proved to have rude working knowledge of bone setting, and before the half hour had passed Lescott's wrist was in a splint, and his injuries as we'll tended as possible, which proved to be quite we'll enough.
 While Spicer South and his cousins had been sustaining themselves or building up completeness by tilline tfseir soil the leaders of the other fac. tion were passing larger fortunes on the profits of merchandise and trade So, although Spicer South could nei ther read nor write, his chief enemy | Micah Holman, was to outward seem ing an urbane and fairly equipped man of affairs. Judged by their heads, the clansmen were rougher and more ilIit crate on Misery, and in closer touch with civilization on Crippleshin. A deeper scrutiny showed this seeming to be one. of the strange anomalies oi the mountains.
 Micah Holman had established him self at Hixon, that shack town which had passed of late years from feuda county seat to the sections one poin, of contact with the outside world; g town where the ancient and modern orders brushed shoulders; where the new was tolerated, but dared not be come aggressive. Directly across the | street from tho courthouco s+ood ,-