The whole country had lately been overrun by open and defiant lawlessness.  It was fast coming to be known far and wide as “Rogue’s Harbor.”  It had already become the recognized refuge and hiding-place of the outcasts from the older states.  The breakers of all laws human and divine,—­the makers of counterfeit money, the forgers of land titles, the stealers of horses, robbers, murderers, thieves and criminals of every sort and condition, the fine gentleman and the ruffian, the duelist and the assassin—­all these were now flocking to Rogue’s Harbor.  Once there, they were not long content merely to find a hiding place from the wrath of broken law and outraged civilization.  They were soon seeking and finding opportunity to commit other and worse offences.  It was no longer a secret that regular stations of outlawry were firmly established between Natchez on the one side and Duff’s Fort, on the other.  The most dreaded of these were known to be within the new state’s border along the line of the Wilderness Road, although the law had not been able to lay its hand upon them.  And thus was southern Kentucky now bound, blinded and helpless, in a long, strong, bloody chain of crime.

It was knowing this and feeling his own responsibility and powerlessness that made the judge’s good-humored face stern on that October morning.  It was this which made his absent-minded eyes clear and keen as he drew near the court-house.  He had come earlier than usual but others, equally anxious, were there before him.  And then the court-house was in a way the mart of the whole region, especially for the sale of horses.  Rough-looking men with the marks of the stable and the race-track upon them, were riding the best quarter nags up and down the forest path and pointing out the delicate leg, the well-proportioned head, and the elegant form, which made the traits of the first race-horses in Kentucky.  Foremost among these first men of the turf was Tommy Dye, scanning the quarter nags with a trained eye.  As soon as the judge saw him, he knew that General Jackson was not far away, for wherever the general went, there also was to be found his faithful henchman, Tommy Dye.  It was he who arranged the cockfights in which the general delighted, declaring a game cock to be the bravest thing alive.  It was he who was always trying to find for him a race-horse which could beat Captain Haynie’s Maria.  This famous racer had beaten the general’s Decatur in that year’s sweepstakes, and he had sworn by his strongest oath that he would find a horse to beat her if there was one in the world that could do it.  But Tommy Dye and other eager, tireless agents of the general had already searched far and wide.  They had gone over all the horse-raising states with a drag-net, they had sent as far as other countries.  And no horse which even promised to beat Maria had yet been found, so that the general’s defeat was still rankling bitterly, for it was the bitterest that he had ever met or ever was to meet.