Year: 1878

A great, fertile hollow, in the midland
hills, and one man owned it all. Five
hundred acres of level and upland, field
and forest; and we'll might Milly Van
Vleeck complain that she could not even
visit a neighbor without climbing over
the hills.


But old Squire Van Vleeck had no
use for neighbors.


Was not the land his own, and the
homestead and the sawmill itself, half
way down the hollowp


Such barnsl


Why, the biggest of them had scarce
ly rival in the county. There was
twenty feet of sheer fall, between the
mows, packed as they now were with
tons Of clover and timothy.


What did he or his need of neighbors
Not much, perhaps, but that fall,
when his ambition goaded him to reach
out for the civic honors he deemed the
rigbtful due of so much land and for
est, saw-mill and crops, and all that, he
suddenly discovered that the people in
the other hollows and on the hills and in
the villages, all had neighbors of their
own.


Such a snub they gave him


No wonder the grim old squire went
back to his ample homestead and
growled at his patient wife, and even
Mt Milly, in spite of her gentleness and
her beauty, and behaved himself, gen.
orally, like the old bear he had grown
to be.


The first heavy SHOWS came earlier
than usual and tue cold weather brought
with it immunity from the one thing the
squire hated most.


Not tramp had been seen in the
hollow for weeks, and no man troubled
himself to ask whittier they had flown.


All the more, however, that bitter af-
ternoon, did the old mans angry soul
stir itself within him when he met, at
his own gate, the most outrageous spec
season had brought before him.


If other tramps had sometimes borne
only the seal of misfortune or of COM
mon vagabondage, this one was clearly
and undeniably chosen vessel of vice
and crime.


Plenty of bone and muscle had he, and
the very swing and spring of his slouch-
ing gait proclaimed that no lack of mere
physical capacity had made him what he
was.


Can tramp have in him anything
like energy?


The squire would have said "No," at
any time before he gave that rowing
ruffian su large and so acrid piece of
his mind and temper.


He had scarcely dreamed of such a
change as his words produced.


There was some magic in them stirring
up evil into power.


The begging whine swelled into vol
ume of hoarse and strident vituperation.
The relics of q mind glowered fercely
through the hairy, filthy face. The
whole hulking frame seemed to culver
as the tramp strobe away, with the
meaning of the threats and curses with
which the air was blue behind him.


Fear is bitter ingredient to put in
the cup of anger, and Squire Van Vleeck
was in even a worse humor than usual,
ten minutes later, when a somewhat
fine-looking young man reined in his
horse at the gate, and seemed about to
spring from his sleigh.


"Good morning, squire"


"Don't stop, Gil Morse Drive right
on |" roared the old man. "Don't stop
agin anywherein this holler. Yer father 8
son needn't quit the road anywhere on
my laud. Ef it hed't a-been for him, 1
might a-had the nomination.


More than that he said; but while the
young mans face deepened to hot
crimson, he controlled his temper suf.
ficiently to give his horse the reins and
do as he was hidden without another
word.


A tall, strongly built, broad-shoul-
dered youth was Gilbert Morse, and a
year in a city business-house had made
none the less man of him. His greet
ing at the squire's had been clearly alto
gether unexpected, and he pulled his
horse to walk, moment later, as if he
wanted to give the matter some kind of
consideration.


How he would have driven if he could
have looked along the road ahead of
him, just beyond where it entered the
hemlock-woods


Distant as were her neighbors, Milly
Van Vleeck was too robust and healthy
minded young lady to remain housed
up, even in winter weather, and she had
never looked roster or prettier in all liz
life than she did that afternoon, as she
tripped along the frosty road home.
ward.


Away beyond the sawmill, and into
the woods she had been, almost aimless.
ly, in sheer exuberance of youth an6
high spirits, never dreaming of such 6
possibility as danger there and then.


Down the road she was coming, anC
the frosty snow that cracked under hel
light feet was not more innocent or fear
less.


A man in the road


1t might be Jake, her fathers sawmil
hand, or it might be one of the farm
boys, or it might be neither. VIII,
should she care?