The Spectator., 1916-01-11

edge of the instrumentalities being
 employed on the real battlefield. Law yers tried condemnation suits with in different success, and then reached | out their hands for a new weapon. Back in the old days. when Ken | lucky was not a state but a county. land patents had been granted by | Virginia to men who had never
 claimed their property. For two hun-
 dred years other men who settled as l pioneers had held undisturbed posses sion. they and their children's chil- | dren. Now into the courts piled multi
 tudinous suits of eviction in the names | of plaintiffs whose eyes had never | seen the broken skyline of the Cum
 berlands. Their purpose was deceit, | since it sought to drag through long
 and costly litigation pauper landhold-
 CTS and to impose such galling bur
 den upon their property as should
 drive them to terms of surrender. | Men and women who owned, or
 thought they owned. log shack and
 tilting cornfield found themselves fac | ing a new and bewldering crisis. | Their untaught minds brooded and | they talked violently of holding by title of rife what their fathers had wrested from nature, what they had tended with sweat and endless toll. But Anse Havey and Milt McBriar | knew that the day was at hand when | the rifle would no longer serve. They employed lawyers fitted to meet those l other lawyers and give them battle in the courts, and these lawyers were paid by Anse Havey and Milt Mo | Briar.
 The two stood stanchly together as | buffer between their almost help | less people and the encroaching ten tacles of the new octopus, while Juan
 ita. looking on at the forming of the
 battlelines, was torn with anxiety. In Bad Anse Havey the combination
 of interests recognized it's really most l formidable foe. In the mountain | phrase. he must be "manpowered out
 men in the hills who, if other means | failed, would sell the service of their
 "rife-guns' for money.
 With such as these it became the | care of certain supernumeraries to es-
 tablish an understanding. In the last
 election thing had happened which
 had not for many years before hap pencd in Kentucky-a change of par l ties had swept from power in Frank l fort the administration which owed l loyalty to Havey influences
 Bad Anse Havey was indicted as an | accessory to the murder of young Cal ] win and he would be tried. not in Peril, | but in the Blue Grass. The prosecu- ! tion would be able to show that he
 had warned the surveyors off his own place and had picketed his fence line
 with rihemen. They would be able to show that he was the forefront of the l fight against innovation and that | lesser mountain men followed his counsel blindly and regarded his word
 as law. But more than that the jurors
 who passed on his question of life
 and death would be drawn from a com
 munity which knew him only by his
 newspaper-m reputation.
 So it was not long before Anse
 Havey lay in cell in the Winchester Jail. He had been denied bond and
 fronted a dreary prospect.
 When the trial of Anse Havey be-
 gan there was one spirit in the land Here was an exponent of the unjusti. 1 fable system of murder from ambush
 In the cemetery at Lexington. where l sleep the founders of the western em- pire, lay boy whose life had just be-
 gun in all the blossom and sunshine
 of promise-and who had done no
 wrong
 The special term of the court had
 brought to Winchester a throng of
 farmer folk and onlookers. Their | horses stood hitched at the racks
 about the square when the sheriff led
 Anse Havey from the Jail to the old l building where he was to face his ac | cusers and the judges who sat on the
 bench and in the jury box.
 He took his seat with his counsel at his elbow and listened to the pre- | liminary formalities of impaneling a jury. His face told nothing. but as | man after man was excused because he had formed an opinion. he read lit.
 tie that was hopeful in the outlook
 He calmly heard perjured witnesses from his own country testify that he had approached them, offering bribes l for the killing of young Calvin which
 they had righteously refused He knew
 that these men had been bought by
 Jim Fletcher and that they swore for
 the hire of syndicate money. but he
 only waited patiently for the defense
 to open. He saw the scowl on the
 faces in the jury box deepen into con
 viction as witness after witness took
 the stand against him, and he saw the
 faces in the body of the room mirror
 that scowl
 Then the prosecution rested. and as
 few of it's perjuries were punctured.
 the faces in the box frightened their
 scowl little-but very little. The tide
 had set against him. and he knew it. Unless one of those strangely psycho-