The Huttig news., 1915-04-17
CHAPTER XVII.

Before the mountain roads were mired with the coming of the rains, and while the air held it's sparkle of autumnal usefulness, Samson South wrote to Milford Horton that if he still meant to come to the hills for his inspection of ceal :nd timber the time was ripe. Soon men would appear bearing transit and chain, drawing a line which railroad was to follow to Misery and across it to the heart of untouched forests and coal-fields With that wave of innovation would come the spectators Besides, Samsoa.s fingers were itching to be out in the hills with a palette and sheaf of brushes in the society of George Les colt
 For a while after the battle at Hixon the county had lai, in torpid parals- sis of dread. Many illiterate feudists on each side remembered the directing
 and exposed figure of Samson South | seen through eddies of gun smoke, and l believed him immune from death. 1 With Purvy Gt ad and Holman the vic l tim of his own hand, the backbone of the murder syndicate was broken It's heart had ceased to beat Those Ho,I- man survivors who bore the potentiali- ties for leadership had not only signed pledges of peace, but were afraid to break them: and the triumphant Souths, instead of vaunting their vic tory, had subscribed to the doctrine of order and declared the war over. Souths who broke the law were as speedily arrested as Hollmans Their boys were drilling as militiamen and wonder of wonders !-inviting the sons of the enemy to join them Of course, these things changed gradual
 y. but the beginnings of them were most noticeable in the first few months, just as a newly painted and renovated house is more conspicuous han one that has long been respecta- ble.
 Hollmans Mammoth Department Store passed into new hands. and traf-. licked only in merchandise, and the town was open to the men and women of Misery as we'll as those of Cripple shin
 These things Samson had explained in his letters to the Lescotts and Hor- ton. Men from down below could still find trouble in the wink of an eye, by seeking it. for under all transformation the nature ' the individual remained much the same. but, without seeking to give offense, they could ride as se- curely through the hills as through the, streets of policed city-and meet a. readier hospitality
 And when these things were dis cussed and the two men prepared to cross the Mason-and-Dixon line and visit the Cumberlands, AdrienLe promptly and definitely announced that she would accompany her brother. No argument was effective to dissuade her, and after all, Lescott, who had been there, saw no good reason why she should not go with him.
 At Eixon, they found that receptive air of serenity which made the history of less than three months ago seem paradoxical and fantastically unreal Only about the courthouse square Wnere numerous SHldil poitS III iiHhto walls told of fusillades, and in the ti,~ terior of the building itself where the woodwork was scared and torn, and the plaster freshly patched did they find grimly reminiscent evidence.
 Samson had not met them at the town. because he wished their first im- pressions of his people to reach them uninfiueneed by his escort. It was a. form of the mountain pride-an hon. est resolve to soften nothing. and make no apologies. But they found arrange ments made for horses and saddlebags, and the girl discovered that for her. had been provided a mount as evenly gaited as any in her own stables.