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of the country along with the other baggages without ever taking into account the genuine simplicity and passion of her yielding.

But all this was far, far too involved for any defence from Abner. He sat silent with some dim baffled feeling of the contradiction in the whitecaps, but what could he say?

Presently the motor emerged from the woods and the headlight picked up the house and barn of Squire Meredith, standing like wraiths against the black sky. Then, as the machine droned down the road between these two buildings, Abner saw coming up the hill from Irontown the light of another automobile.

One of the men in the car said in an undertone, "There they are," and Abner suddenly understood that this meeting of the motors had been planned.

The youth's heart began to beat and he leaned forward staring intently as his car whirled down the hill. He saw three other motors parked by the roadside at the spot where Peck Bradley had been lynched. These cars were arranged in a semicircle so that their headlights were focussed on the tree which had seen the bushwhacker's end. This tree stood out against the night in pallid greens and intense shadows. It looked like the spectre of a tree, and Abner could visualize Peck Bradley once more slowly revolving under its limb.

Beyond the motors, in a faint reflected light, Abner could make out a group of figures. Here and there in the group he could see a cigarette tip glow and fade. With a tremor he realized this crowd in the darkness was awaiting some sort of entertainment; they waited as complacently as spectators at a circus for something to pick up their nerves, something that would break the monotony of their hill lives, something that would afford them a thrill and a spectacle.

By this time Abner's wrists were swollen and the ropes were cutting him badly. He moistened his dry lips and asked his captor to loosen them again. But under the influence of the crowd the kindliness that once had moved the