“Fourth District, County of Cumberland, State of North Carolina.  Done this twenty-fourth day of May, I835.

“P.S.  Dear Bob:  Dave Blount says he ain’t able to chew his meat.  I thought you’d be glad to know.”

Smilingly Carrington folded the warrant and handed it to Yancy.

“Well, what are you goin’ to do about hit, Bob?” inquired Balaam.

“Maybe I’d ought to go.  I’d like to oblige the squire,” said Yancy.

“When does this here co’t set?” demanded Uncle Sammy.

“Hit don’t do much else since he’s took with the lumbago,” answered Balaam somewhat obscurely.

“How are the squire, Charley?” asked Yancy with grave concern.

“Only just tolerable, Bob.”

“What did he tell you to do?” and Yancy knit his brows.

“Seems like he wanted me to find out what you’d do.  He recommended I shouldn’t use no violence.”

“I wouldn’t recommend you did, either,” assented Yancy, but without heat.

“I’d get shut of this here law business, Bob,” advised Uncle Sammy.

“Suppose I come to the Cross Roads this evening?”

“That’s agreeable,” said the deputy, who presently departed in company with Carrington.

Some hours later the male population of Scratch Hill, with a gravity befitting the occasion, prepared itself to descend on the Cross Roads and give its support to Mr. Yancy in his hour of need.  To this end those respectable householders armed themselves, with the idea that it might perhaps be necessary to correct some miscarriage of justice.  They were shy enough and timid enough, these remote dwellers in the pine woods, but, like all wild things, when they felt they were cornered they were prone to fight; and in this instance it was clearly iniquitous that Bob Yancy’s right to smack Dave Blount should be questioned.  That denied what was left of human liberty.  But beyond this was a matter of even greater importance:  they felt that Yancy’s possession of the boy was somehow involved.

Yancy had declared himself simply but specifically on this point.  Law or no law, he would kill whoever attempted to take the boy from him, and Scratch Hill believing to a man that in so doing he would be well within his rights, was prepared to join in the fray.  Even Uncle Sammy, who had not been off the Hill in years, announced that no consideration of fatigue would keep him away from the scene of action and possible danger, and Yancy loaned him his mule and cart for the occasion.  When the patriarch was helped to his seat in the ancient vehicle he called loudly for his rifle.

“Why, pap, what do you want with a weapon?” asked his son indulgently.  “If there air shootin’ I may take a hand in it.  Now you-all give me a fair hour’s start with this mule critter of Bob’s, and if nothin’ busts I’ll be at the squire’s as soon as the best of you.”