Tombstone epitaph., 1917-03-04

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 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 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 bewildering 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 rife would no longer serve. They employed lawyers fitted to meet those other lawyers and give them battle in the courts. and these lawyers were paid by Anse Havey and Milt Me Briar
 The two stood stanchly together as a 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 its really most formidable foe. In the mountain | phrase, he must be "man-powered out en ther way" And there were still men in the hills who. if other means failed, would sell the service of their ''rifie-guns" for money.
 With such as these it became the care of certain supernumeraries to es- | tablish an understanding. In the last election a thing had happened which | had not for many years before hap pened in Kentucky-a change of par ties had swept from power in Frank fort the administration which owed 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 oil his own place and had picketed his fence line with rifiemen. They would be able to show that he was the forefront of the fight against innovation and that lesser mountain men followed his counsel blindly and regarded his word l as law. But. more than that the jurors who passed on his question of Hfc | and death wou,d be drawr from a com munity which kne~ nIm only by his newspaper-made reputation.
 So it was not long before Anse Havey lay in a cell in the Winchester | jail. He had been denied bond and fronted dreary prospect.
 When the trial of Anse Havey be- gan there was one spirit in the land Here was an exponent of the unjusti- fable system of murder from ambush In the cemetery at Lexington. where sleep the founders Of the western em- pire, lay a 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 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 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 its 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 logical things should occur which sweep juries suddenly from their
 moorings of fixed opinion. he must be the sacrifice to Blue Grass wrath. and
 on the list of witnesses under the hand of his attorney there were only { ; 'few names left-pitifully few.